


Foreseen

by Little Wolf White Peacock (Tiger_Gray)



Series: Crystalline: A Star Wars Story [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Bodhi Rook Lives, Bodhi Rook Needs a Hug, Canon-Typical Violence, Demisexual Poe Dameron, Eventual Poe Dameron/Finn, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Gray Jedi, Grey Jedi, M/M, Original Character(s), POV Jessika Pava, POV Poe Dameron, Star Wars: The Force Awakens Spoilers, blatant timeline fuckery, shamelessly borrowing from the extended universe when I feel like it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2018-09-19 02:10:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 40,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9413108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiger_Gray/pseuds/Little%20Wolf%20White%20Peacock
Summary: Poe goes on a mission that just might save Finn's life





	1. Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Poe and Jessika venture in to the cosmos to procure bacta for Finn. So rare as to be non-existent in the struggling Resistance, their quest could be futile. But pilots don't give up or turn tail. They see their missions through. Poe and Jessika are no different.

“Poe.”

The voice made him jump up, a salute halfway done before he’d even found his feet. The unforgiving stiff mattress that had been his perch for hours now had dug in to his skin and made standing painful. He stifled a groan and searched for the right words, trying his best to appear professional though he probably looked like some greaseball mechanic who’d run out of wash water rations.

“General Organa. To what do I owe the honor?”

Even though he often spoke with her, about missions, about Resistance resources, about whatever relevant things currently on the docket, personal visits were rare. For the first time he saw her face without the overlay of a map distorting it, as they all crowded around the war table and peered at the details of their next mission.

“At ease.” She told him, a little smirk on her lips. It wasn’t cruel, just amused. He sat once more on the edge of Finn’s bed, the sound of the ventilator picking away at his patience. “You’ve spent a lot of time here, haven’t you?”

_So much time that I know the droids by designation. So much time that I don’t even mind the sweat-disinfectant-blood smell. So much time. And in all that time, nothing from Finn. No twitching. No sounds. Nothing._

She took one of the chairs, a little sigh escaping once she settled. The crow’s feet around her eyes and the smile lines around her mouth seemed etched by laser point; Han’s death had hit her hard. He wondered about those smile lines, too; his entire time in the Resistance, he’d never seen her smile. Not really. She smirked, or she quirked a single eyebrow. But never a real, wide smile, the kind that came naturally hand and hand with joy.

“Yeah, I guess.” Poe said, reluctant to speak on this even with General Organa, whom he trusted implicitly. Why the hell _was_ he here? Finn didn’t deserve to struggle with an injury as serious as a lightsaber to the back — _Finn, paralyzed, waking up to a nightmare where he had to rely on machines to sleep and shit and breathe —_ but he had to admit his constant vigil must seem strange to others. Even _he_ thought it strange. He ought to be in his X-wing, his X-wing that had sat in the hangar for who knew how long, his X-wing that gleamed with polish after obsessive polish. You could always tell a lazy pilot by his clean X-wing.

“Finn is very brave,” General Organa said, the overhead lights glinting off her golden earrings bringing a false glow to her eyes. Poe felt heat rise in his face as surely as the lava coating Mustafar, and the urge to cry and the urge to howl in rage battled it out mercilessly. He remembered the battle outside Maz Kanata’s fortress, and frowned. “Yeah,” he choked out, dragging his hand over his forehead and down his face. Cold sweat beaded up on his fingers.

“And you obviously care about him a great deal.”

“It’s stupid,” Poe said before he could consider his words, “I barely know the guy.” Even as he spoke, the moments he and Finn had shared in the commandeered TIE fighter’s cockpit flashed through his mind. Maybe…

General Organa frowned, and for a long moment she said nothing. Only the soft whirring and beeping from the medi-droid broke the silence.

“Han and I didn’t know one another long, you know. We didn’t need to. When you’re in a situation with another person and it’s life or death, you can forge a connection in moments.”

 _God,_ that was exactly what had happened. Finn, escaping from the First Order. Him, going from sure he would be executed to a heart pounding chance at a rescue, and a rescue from the unlikeliest of quarters. He’d needed someone like General Organa to name it, before he could admit it to himself.

“What can I do?” He managed, throat as dry as a ritual offering left out in the elements.

“I have a possible answer for you, Poe, or I wouldn’t have come,” General Organa said, a little life coming in to her expression then; she wanted him to succeed. His heart swelled and he lifted his head. If General Organa believed in him, he could do anything, fly anything, accomplish anything. “Tell me, have you ever heard of bacta?”

 

——


	2. Ghost

Poe _had_ heard of bacta. He'd even see it in action, once. Back in his Republic days, a new pilot had barely made it off the runway before flipping his X-wing right in to the drink. They'd managed to fish Tallers out of the ocean before the corrosive black water ate through his flight suit, but his hands and face...that was a different story. Poe had stood there looking on, already composing a condolences letter in his head. No way would that guy ever recover. But a few bandages soaked in that stuff, and eyes had emerged, clear and open, a nose next, even better than before; Tallers sometimes got in bar fights, and at least one hadn't gone his way. 

Poe still felt the disbelief and amazement whenever he thought about that. Bacta could cure anything, right? Even a lightsaber to the back. He  _had_ to get the stuff, no matter what. He might not have known Finn long, but what did that matter? Finn deserved better than living out the rest of his life on a hospital gurney. 

“Why are you doing this, General?”

Poe asked as he followed her in to the war room. It stood empty. Odd.

She turned towards him and put her hands on the edge of the table, then leaned in as if to peer at a briefing that hadn’t quite appeared yet. Gods, did they spend that much time looking at mission details? He had the strange sense that the schematic of Starkiller Base hung there still, a pale wraith. 

“Do you suspect the angels of my better nature?” Her tone was sharp enough to remind him of the grapefruit tree in his grandfather’s backyard, how trying to enjoy its fruits required a certain amount of masochism. He’d always gorged himself on those grapefruits, come to think of it. 

“Oh. No ma’am, I…”

“Save it. You might as well, since I happen to have an ulterior motive.” 

Aha. Well, as grateful as the Resistance might be towards Finn, the resources already committed _had_ made Poe wonder. A lot for one man, no matter his deeds. 

“My brother is not the only Jedi warrior we will need to call upon if we want to win against the First Order. They have suffered a great loss, but they have not been defeated,” General Organa intoned, flipping on the display. Poe knew a half-done starchart of Wild Space when he saw one, but beyond that only ghosts knew and they weren’t talking.

Suddenly the empty war room made sense. 

“You know more than one Jedi?” Poe blurted. 

“One or two more,” the General said with false modesty. 

_Holy kriff._

“Well…” He took in the chart again, rotating slowly before him. Like most maps someone had programmed it in blue and green, but unlike most maps a path of brilliant gold danced through the middle. Did it represent what the General knew, about where to find this Jedi of hers? He could only imagine that the mission _had_ to include doing just that. 

He ached to follow that bright road in to nowhere. 

“I’ll do it.”

A shot at bringing Finn back around, plus a wild chase to locate a lost Jedi? Would have only been a better deal if the General had involved little lemon cakes somehow. 

Of course, the General had known that all along; she didn’t even bother asking if he felt sure.

“This Jedi is of a different character than many of the others,” she said, “he is…grey.”

“A Grey Jedi? I remember there was a character like that in one of the storybooks I liked when I was little. They’re real?”

“Yes. But I had thought they were all dead, or so deep in hiding it amounted to the same.”

“How did you find this one then?”

“I didn’t. Not for sure. But this Grey Jedi happened to know Lord Vader. If there's a chance, we must find him.” 

“ _What?”_

“Well. If you count a pitched lightsaber battle at the old Jedi temple knowing him, yes.” 

Poe almost swayed on his feet. A battle with _Vader_? And this Grey Jedi had lived through it? 

“Hells, I can see why you want to find him, then.” 

“His name is Jin-Array. A Vor, though he has proved to be longer lived than others from his species. A quirk of Vor genetics, maybe. Or, the Force has gifted him more years, preserving him. In any case, I need you to find him. Quietly.”

The vague image he had in his head wanted to coalesce in to something heroic, a larger than life figure with a blazing lightsaber in hand. But he couldn’t quite reconcile that with the facts, that this particular Jedi happened to be a seven foot tall winged lizard.

“Just me then?”

He let it roll casually from his tongue, but a knot formed and pulled tight in his chest. The last time he’d gone on a solo mission…

For a moment, he couldn’t see past the images his mind called up. The Force-sensitive tree next to his childhood home, the branches reaching over the roof of their house, protecting it. Or so he had always imagined. But ever since Kylo Ren had violated his mind, the memory had changed. The tree had become a twisted, bare skeleton, black with burrowing parasites and strangled by thorny vines. The rainforest around it had changed too, a killing marsh slowly dragging the tree and everything else to a suffocating grave in the swampy depths. 

_The tree from the old Jedi Temple. Hm._

“No,’ General Organa said, a little frown tugging at her mouth. Her lips had been rouged with a deep mauve color, and even the lines of her makeup had been done with a precise, no nonsense hand. Did she think about the mission to find Lor San Tekka? Did she wonder what they’d done to him on the Finalizer? Or was she too disciplined to bother?

Poe shuddered.

“Did you really think you were going to go on a super secret mission without me?

Jess loped in to the room, a huge grin on her face, her flight helmet tucked neatly under her arm. Her cheery voice helped bring him out of his dark reverie. He felt himself grin, too. Hard not to when you were around Blue Three. 

“Yeah? You’re coming with?” 

He couldn’t quite hope.

“Hey listen,” Jess said, leaning against the war table, “I’m from Dandoran. You want bacta? You need to talk to smugglers, bounty hunters. Hutts. And no offense to you but you’re not my first choice for scheming and lying.” 

He’d disguised himself as a criminal before, but even then they’d been in a ship to ship battle. No need to butter anyone up in that case. 

“Ouch. The last mission debrief referred to me as dashing, you know.” 

“Great you can be my ridiculously handsome bodyguard then,” Jess tossed off without missing a beat, shooting an exaggerated wink his way. 

He almost lost it laughing, but at the last second remembered they were in the presence of General Organa. He turned back towards her, panic rising, but her gleaming eyes told him she was trying to hold back a chuckle. 

“Okay, Dandoran.” He said, spreading his hands wide in an acceptance gesture. “But that makes it sound like the bacta and finding Jin-Array are two separate missions.”

“THey’re one in the same,” General Organa said. 

“Yeah,” Jess agreed. “The only thing smugglers value more than tangible cargo, is information. If you want us to find a way in to Wild Space, information is worth just as much as the bacta.” 

“I have a commandeered VCX-100 light freighter in the hangar for you,” General Organa interjected. “Its identifiers have been scrubbed. If you’re clever, you won’t be tracked back to us.”

“I like to think I’m always clever,” Poe said, with a note of wounded pride. Jess snorted. The General pursed her lips and shot him a withering look. 

“Go." She said. "There’s a secure channel on the freighter if you need to brief me.”

The General handed him a piece of paper. In a moment, Poe memorized the information, then tore the sheet in to unrecognizable ribbons. In an age of electronic communication, sometimes the most secure method was also one of the oldest. 

“Ready Jess?” He asked as they walked out, his arm around her shoulders.

“Hell yeah. I’m bored!”

“We’ve only been grounded for a couple of weeks,” he teased, though he’d been as antsy as Jess. 

They turned to go in to the hangar. As he was inspecting the freighter, the rest of his squadron came over, one by one. Some warned him, some reassured him, others simply embraced him, and Jess, without words. 

It felt wrong to go anywhere without them, but the reality was many Resistance missions were covert and weren’t helped by large groups. 

“Let’s go, Jess,” he said, leaning out from the boarding hatch and offering his hand, a big grin on his face. She clasped his arm and let him lift her in to the ship, his expression mirroring hers. 

“Force be with us, huh?” Jess said as she headed for the gunner’s position. The door hissed and gulped, making a heavy seam that would protect them from the dangers of space. 

“Couldn’t hurt!” 

He eased the freighter out and up, immediately identifying a slight pull to the left and a sticky trigger button on his joystick. Nothing he couldn’t handle. 

_Back up in to the big black._

Whenever he eased in to a pilot’s seat and felt that unique, special _lift_ of a vehicle rising in to the atmosphere, he could forget that blighted tree and surrender to something bigger than himself. 

_ Hang in there, Finn.  _


	3. Slipstream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I am drawing on the Extended Universe. That said, that shouldn't be taken as an endorsement of the entire EU. I am just shamelessly borrowing when it seems apt.

Poe let the hours slip by. He’d chosen to stay in the pilot’s chair way past his allotted time, but he figured Jess could use the rest. Or if she wasn’t sleeping, maybe she needed time to think. He sure did. Broken, flaming X-wings spiraled towards an explosive end in the vacuum of space, filling his mind; every flight, they lost more pilots, and beyond that, good people who had lives and hopes and dreams. It had to be on her mind, too, despite the good feelings that had come with starting a new mission.

_I’m sorry, Muran,_ he thought as he stared out the viewscreen, leg propped on the console. He couldn’t help it; the black brought out his black thoughts, always. 

That day back during their stint in the Republic had started like any other day, like the one on D’Qar, where there were no hints as to the events to come. One moment he could still taste the caf, the next half the fleet…just _gone._ Like Alderaan, like Scarif, like Jeddha, the Empire, the First Order, snuffing them out like stars going dark, as if cities and planets were things that just…went away sometimes. 

_Muran’s X-wing, caught in the slipstream. Breaking apart, like a child prying the wings off of a toy. That final cry over the comm—what was it supposed to be? Did it have words submerged in it, drowning in surprise, anger, fear?_

_Something meant for him?_

“You look like shit,” Jess said as she stomped in to the cockpit. She was one to talk, with the dark circles under her eyes and her hair tousled round like a womp rat’s nest. 

“ _I_ look like shit?” He demanded, twisting in the chair to get a better look. “I guess you didn’t pass any mirrors on your way here, buddy.” 

“Well yeah, that’s a bad policy,” Jess grumbled, flopping in to the co-pilot’s seat. “What the fuck is the point of that? I know I’m not a Twi’lek dancing girl.”

Jess always woke up rough, like a bear with a toothache. 

“You think we’ll get far with that attitude?”

“I’m supposed to be a smuggler and a bounty hunter. Those jobs don’t make people nice and cuddly.” She pointed out, propping her feet up on the dashboard and staring sullenly at the passing features of deep space. 

“Why do I have the sneaking suspicion you have something terrible planned?”

“Well…I do like to embarrass you, Dameron.” She turned a wide grin on him, and he felt it like a tangible warmth. 

“Hey! I’m the squad leader, you know.” 

“Not out here, you’re not.”

“What am I then?”

“I don’t want to spoil the surprise…”

—

Poe flexed his hands to keep them from falling asleep; Jess had fastened the stun cuffs a little too tight. On purpose, probably. 

“Who wants a go at this fine piece of ass?” She shouted, driving him forward with a slap to a _very_ sensitive spot. He yelped and a hot blush bloomed on his cheeks; the crowd took notice and some bystanders wolf-whistled as he went by. He’d managed to argue well enough that he’d kept some of his clothes, but he hadn’t quite convinced Jess to give him a shirt. 

“Why didn’t you tell me you had a whole other life?” He hissed, sidling away from a Duros trying to pinch him. Plenty of hands ghosted over him even so but luckily, no one else tried to rough up the merchandise. The murmur and roar of the crowds made him dizzy; so _much_ stimuli at once. Others wearing the same stun cuffs passed through the gauntlet of admirers. What would their fate be? He was just playing at being a slave, but for them it was reality. They didn’t have a Jessika Pava to run interference for them; they lived and died on a whim, their bodies currency, something to use instead of respect.

“Wouldn’t be much of a cover if everyone I knew started blabbing about it,” she said, scanning the area as they pushed through the crowds in Dandoran’s biggest market. The market didn’t have the neat stalls and stands one sometimes saw in Republic Space. Instead people with something to sell fought each other for spots to set up their stuff, and those spots could be as basic as a square of packed earth. Some folks did have shops of a kind, cobbled together from driftwood and the vines that flourished in the rainforest, as tough as cord and as useful. 

A tall, dark-skinned man with his face covered in spiral tattoos tugged a fishing net in as they went by, the fat, silver fish so fresh Poe could smell the river they’d come out of. As he and Jess turned the corner the scent of cooking food hit, breads puffing up on makeshift grills, t’suryus sizzling away over cobbled together stoves as the squat Artiodac that oversaw them all dashed from cook to cook, beating them around the head and shoulders with wooden spoons (held in each of its four hands) if they weren’t performing the way it wanted. 

A burly enhanced human with blue hair and golden eyes sat on a ragged, woven blanket that at one point had likely been bright and soft, a brace of fat, inky black Sha’rellian toops grouped up together like bunches of overripe fruit. A sullustan leaned over her makeshift counter while he was still staring at the living hair pieces, suggesting they buy her good luck charms in a friendly enough (if insistent) voice. He turned to look. Her white faceplate glittered and Poe’s heart swelled as they smiled at each other; he missed Nien. Missed all of them, _his_ pilots, really. Jess waved her off and nudged Poe down an alleyway nearby. 

“Maybe we should have bought one,” Poe said. 

“Guess we could use the luck, huh? Don’t worry. I have a ‘buyer’ set up who won’t take advantage of you. I mean, she’ll _want_ to climb you like a tree, but you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

Poe had to admire Jess’ resourcefulness if nothing else. And General Organa’s, since she had to have a hand in Jess’ smuggler ‘self,’ a whole false existence crafted carefully from forged documents, discreet fences, and connections Jess had cultivated ever since being born here. It came easy to her and even though she was a bitch in the morning, it didn’t surprise him. Jess could be optimistic even in the worst circumstances, joking over the comms even when they were hard done by atmo, X-wings juddering and skimming _way_ too close to solid ground for anyone’s comfort, whole flights of TIE fighters coming in hot behind them. 

They walked a spiral path in to one of the residential districts. Homes leaned against each other, some with their foundations sunken in to the mud. Doors were often nothing more than a beaded curtain or a ripped bedsheet. Not very secure, sure, but the muggy heat at midday probably made an open home more pleasant, if nothing else. 

“So who is she?” Poe said. They passed a line of people dressed in rags —albeit bright ones — beating rugs and airing out bedding. That midday heat offered the only period where you might get your things clean and dry before the wet settled in again. 

Jess fit right in, her green and buff roughspun outfit suggesting she at the very least had come to trade. She had her hair wrapped in a headscarf, too, following the custom in certain parts of Dandoran. He could see her black bangs sticking out all over the place anyway, made frizzy by the moist air. He smiled, though he didn’t let her see it. 

“You ever watch Angel Kind?” 

“Are you kidding? Stars! I love that show. I have the action figures.”

“Whoa, Dameron. You are a huge dork,” she told him, tugging him after her by the chain between his stun cuffs. 

“Guilty as charged.” 

“And to think some people think you’re smooth,” Jess snorted, following a series of switchback alleyways without pause. 

The districts changed as they walked, ramshackle shelters replaced by shining spires and huge entertainment halls. The scent of spice and well-handled money wafted out from a gambling den at the same time discordant music floated in to the street from the club up the road. 

He paused, swallowing hard. He still knew Jess was nearby, but the scene faded and rippled, swirling around him as real as the water pooling in every available crevice on this planet. 

“Dameron? Hey! Poe?”

He could handle stimuli in his X-Wing. He had no problem parsing thousands of different inputs when flying. He could make Black One turn and roll on even the slightest opening, his brain sorting and acting on information in moments. He could whip that beautiful beast in to a lather, diving hard in to atmo and picking off individual targets at so many paces it was damn surprising he wasn’t Force sensitive.But this?

Jess touched his hands and he looked down, dumbly staring. It took him a moment to register what she’d done. 

“Sorry Jess,” he said, worried about blowing their cover with this little display. 

“Hells, it’s all right. You don’t get to go planet side much. You know, all of us pilots struggle with it sometimes. You fly as often as we do, your life turns in to what you can see through your X-Wing’s windshield.” 

She got him moving again. At least here no one stopped to grope him. 

“Should have put a leash on you,” Jess mused as she guided them, the throngs of people so diverse that Poe couldn’t put a name to some of the aliens that went by. 

“Didn’t know you were in to that, Pava,” Poe teased, feeling a little better once they got close to their destination. It was a sharp sliver of a building, cloud-grey with gold and purple lights in the windows. Carefully shaped and pruned plants had grown up around it, making the building look half alive; he swore he could feel it breathing, even at a distance. 

“Shut it, tyro,” she growled. He bit his tongue to keep from laughing. 

The hotel lobby dazzled his eyes, a sprawling affair of polished fawn and ivory. A water feature that must have cost more than what he made in a year spiraled through, bringing a fresh smell to the place. It cleared his head somewhat and he felt aware of the air in his lungs in a way he couldn’t outside. 

“Pava,” an enhanced human approached. Their gender couldn’t be discerned; they had a delicate, even aristocratic face that even so remained free of any usual traits that might have signaled their identity. Their eyes were gold and their skin a soft, unblemished ivory. Still, the dark eyes were narrowed; he wondered if they had learned the expression later in life. It didn’t look quite right on that face. 

“Hey Freva,” she said without missing a beat. “Brought some new meat for Nutrepa. You know how she likes them.” 

Freva turned their dark gaze to him. The stare felt like hands, caressing his face and slipping down to his bare chest. He shivered; it wasn’t exactly welcome. 

“All right. Don’t cause a scene.”

“You wound me, Freva,” Jess said, en exaggerated pout on her lips. Freva shook their head and glided away such that their charcoal black dress floated around them, as if their dignity could protect them from low things like slave trading. 

They went up the grand staircase. Poe felt like a character in a drama about kings and queens, probably one where everyone had terrible secrets and were plotting to kill each other. Flowers bloomed everywhere he looked, sun-red and crisp white, bunches of blue hanging so fat and full that they appeared like they’d drop to the floor any second in an explosion of petals. The smells here were as strong as those that had overwhelmed him in the street, but they were of such a character that he found comfort in them instead. 

Jess took him to the top floor. He knew that likely meant excess and lavishness, but he still felt surprise at the moans he could hear as they went past rooms shut tight. 

“What is this place, exactly?” He murmured, taking in all the details as best he could. 

“It’s kinda a hotel, and kinda an apartment building,” Jess whispered. “Lots of celebrities and crime bosses have rooms here. Don’t let it fool you. This place is as corrupt as the low places. It just comes with a candy coating.” 

“Gotcha,” Poe said, hoping he wouldn’t have to fend off a hungry Zabrak, in more ways than one. 

Jess knocked when she found the right door, and the two 

Noghri bodyguards passed them through. Poe tried not to stare. He’d heard of General Organa’s connection to the Noghri, and had even seen a couple of them here and there, operating from the shadows to protect her. He had no doubt these two could kill him before he could even flinch, if he put a toe out of line. 

A tall Zabrak woman rose from the chaise lounge, tucked against the far window in the massive receiving room of her suite. She wore gauzy purple to underscore the delicate lavender of her skin, a crown of glittering, golden horns bright against her long white hair. She had bare feet, and they sunk in to the creamy, plush carpet as she walked. 

Not just any Zabrak; once he got a full look at her he realized he happened to be standing in the same room as Nykita Nyx, femme fatale and martial artist. Okay so that was her character, but still. She did all her own stunts. 

He almost blurted out how much he loved her show, but managed to keep it back. Jess glanced up at him, then over at Nutrepa. 

“I brought you something special,” Jess said, tugging on the chain that kept his stun cuffs together. “A slave whose pretty as hell and also happens to _love_ your work.” 

“Yes?” Nutrepa said, letting her gaze rake over his body from feet to hair. He didn’t know what to make of it until Jess elbowed him in the ribs. Oh. Sexual interest? “But you are not truly a slave, are you?” 

Her accent came from one of the Zabrak colony worlds, making her words comparatively soft and sweet. It reminded him of the lullabies his dad knew, the tongue of the ancient people of Yavin 4. His people. 

God, he missed it. Yeah the base had its similarities, but…

Shit. They wanted him to answer. 

“Nope,” he offered, after Jess nodded at him to tell him he could go ahead and spill the beans. 

“Ah. A pity,” Nutrepa said, though she had a cant to her head that gave her away as amused instead of upset. “At least stand there and look lovely.”

“Can do,” he offered, grinning. Jess sighed a long suffering sigh. More than enough reward for him. 

“Now Pava,” she continued, “what is it you truly want from me?” 

“I’ll be blunt: I need a lead on bacta. A lot of it. And some information. The kind we shouldn’t talk about just anywhere.” 

Nutrepa frowned. “Come with me. I have a safer place than this.”

Jess did as told, the chain still looped around her wrist so that he had to follow her no matter what. He wondered how long Jess would keep him locked up like this. Long enough to be funny later, when she inevitably told Snap about it. 

_I hope you appreciate this, Finn._

 Maybe he’d just...conveniently forget to tell Finn this part of the story.


	4. Artifact

Nutrepa's private quarters were exactly as Poe expected. Inviting, low light from the bejeweled lamps dotted around the suite of rooms bloomed on the dark purple walls and unfurled over the bedspread, a single piece of sun-gold fur that glimmered wherever the brightest illumination touched it.

_Don't think every dollar I've ever earned would pay for even half that thing._

He followed Jess inside, stepping in her footsteps. An old habit, for the rare times they'd had to ditch out of their X-wings on some unfamiliar planet. You never knew what you'd find out there. Carnivorous grass? Yep. It had managed to get through Jess's boot soles before they'd realized what was happening and burnered the kriff out of there. Air made out of some shit you couldn't even recognize, let alone breathe? He and Jess had passed their only oxygen mask, snatched from her wrecked ship, back and forth till someone had thought to come rescue them. All the while, glittering glimpses of beasts a hell of a lot bigger than them could be seen in the forest, and only sticking close and keeping calm had kept them from being something's dinner.

A waft of perfume brushed over his face, like the caress of a summertime zephyr on a pleasure planet. Nutrepa turned, her skirt swirling. Her long hair almost seemed outlined by back lighting, as if she had a camera crew following her everywhere, a team of artists always stepping in to adjust her outfit and powder her face.

"So. Bacta." She started, offering them both seats. Poe settled into the plush cushion.

_WIsh I had this kind of seat in my bird._

Nutrepa chose the chair from her vanity, a massive, glossy white table with a huge mirror attached. Perfume bottles sat haphazardly on one end, flowers, faeries and ribbons in blown glass peeking up from the collection; looked like Nutrepa might have been kind of a slob, without hired help to clean up for her. A polished-wood jewelry box sat half open on the other side, spilling gems and jewels like a Hutt's cache.

"You must understand how difficult this request is," Nutrepa continued, leaning back and crossing her dainty ankles. Well, dainty for a Zabrak, anyhow. "There is a shortage of medical supplies, and this is the penultimate medical supply."

Jess leaned in. Poe knew that look, a look that said _I want to eat this woman like I'm starving and she's the biggest damn cupcake I've ever seen._

"Look," Jess said, "I know how hard it is to get. But you don't come to Dandoran if all you need is some engine-room hootch and a dancing girl or two. You can get that anywhere."

"I suppose so," Nutrepa said, pushing the veil of her hair back over her slim shoulder. Her expression was tough to read, and not just because she happened to be something other than human. What could have made her nervous enough to hesitate like this?

"Come on, girl. Don't dick me around." Jess said, though her tone stayed on the friendly side of things.

"I know you'd probably have to take a risk to help us," Poe interjected. "I get that. But...it's for a friend. We'll keep you out of it as much as possible. If we get captured or something, these lips stay sealed."

He had the training to back that up. Only time he'd ever blabbed, Kylo Ren had to rip it out of him with Dark side bullshit. That, in any planet on any world, was _cheating._

_That jerk off wouldn't know a fair fight if it bit him in the ass._

Nutrepa didn't answer at first.

"All right." She said. "I do have a lead. A contact. This information must never be spoken in the light of day." Another pause. Poe felt as if he'd been bewitched, his whole body a taut cable. "She is a Nightsister. Or, she was, at one time."

"No fucking shit," Jess exclaimed. "I thought the Empire slaughtered them all."

Nutrepa smirked.

"You are entering a world full of relics," she said. "What you will find are artifacts of a broken age. Look to the edges of the galaxy. Seek out the hidden. Draw meaning from what came before."

Poe thought of Finn, then. Finn who had no past. No family. Not even an identity beyond a number, until recently. All of that, stolen away. Who else had suffered similar fates, everything they knew destroyed, loved ones murdered in front of them? Forced to go into hiding, or wander from planet to planet, always seeking, never finding.

"Tell us more about this Nightsister," Poe prompted, gently.

"Her name is Zawati Yala. She has many secrets I don't know, of course. If she didn't, surely she wouldn't have survived this long. But from what I have gleaned, she was not born into being a Nightsister. She...converted? Or deserted, if you like. From her clan."

Jess whistled long and low.

"What the fuck could make someone do that? I mean, yeah, we've seen Sith. But Nightsisters don't work the same, do they?"

"Same things that turn people everywhere," Poe said.

"Hmm. I don't know the answer to that. I am a Zabrak, and our politics and planets of origin and so on and on are complex enough. I assume most sentient beings in the galaxy are similar. There will always be a cultural aspect you may not fully understand. But...you are not entirely incorrect, either. It is my understanding that she lost her most beloved Nightbrother, and procured bacta to help him back when it was more easily acquired. If the story is true and he died before she could get it to him...she may still have it secreted away somewhere."

_Better than nothing._

"Is she on Dandoran?" Jess wanted to know.

"Last I heard, yes. But I don't pretend to understand her whims. I can lead you to the general area where she was last seen. But...those few that do come back from where she's supposed to be living are never quite the same."

Poe got out his datapad, and almost missed Jess propositioning Nutrepa because of it. He sighed inwardly, but really he didn't mind. He'd just read something. It wouldn't be the first time he'd been around for one of Jess's sexual conquests.

Jess and Nutrepa headed to the bed, rolling around on that priceless comforter. Poe put his feet up on Jess's empty chair, flicking through his library. He chose a trashy romance and lost himself in it almost immediately. He knew to take moments of leisure whenever and however they decided to show up.

\--

"This is fucking ridiculous," Jess announced, hacking through the thick brush out in the remote swamp they'd made their way to, machete dripping green from the vines she'd cut. For the first time Poe was glad they hadn't brought BB-8; he couldn't have made it through the terrain without a lot of wear and tear on his servos. "Nutrepa's intel better be good."

"It will be. I think you-- _somehow--_ convinced her."

Jess tossed an unrepentent grin over her shoulder at him.

"Yanno, I have a silver tongue."

"Your tongue is sure something, all right," he mock grumbled.

"Come on," she said, pushing aside a hanging curtain of foliage. "You didn't suffer. Got pretty far in your book, if nothing else. How is it, anyway?"

"Raoul and--kriff..." He paused long enough to yank a thorny tendril from around his ankle. "Raoul and Myri just about kissed."

Jess hooted with excitement.

"No shit? I..."

She never finished her sentence. Even the two of them with all the Force sensitivity of am engine turbine felt it then. Poe had sure felt the Force before, both Light and Dark. This though.... _._ what _was_ this?

And then the _smell_ hit. A roar reverberated through the jungle, and Jess instinctively dropped to all fours, heedless of the swampy ground. Poe drew his blaster without having to think about it, scanning the gnarled trees, the pools of brackish water. The gleam of the blaster in Jess's hand made him feel better, until the ground started to shake.

It shouldn't be possible, and yet...

"A kriffing rancor," he breathed, throat tight. "How the hell did a rancor end up on Dandoran?"

"Who gives a shit," Jess snapped, "let's get our asses in gear."

They crashed through the underbrush. Not good if they wanted to escape an apex predator, but what choice did they have? Jess moved like she had a blue flame coming out of her ass, and he almost lost her in the endless green and brown.

"Jess! Jess -- "

 He pushed through into a clearing, and had only moments to observe any details; water up to his knees, moss covered trees growing together into a crown that blocked out what little light there was.

And a hungry rancor, dwarfing Jess's frozen form as it leaned down, its teeth bared and dripping.

Poe emptied his blaster into it, the bolts only making it flinch and roar all the louder. It snapped at Jess, who finally came back to herself. She dropped and rolled out of the way just in time, its massive paw thumping into the earth where she'd stood only a moment before. Poe fumbled for the cartridges at his belt, slamming one home and lifting the weapon to shoot it again, aiming for its eyes.

~ **stop~**

The voice echoed _in_ his head. His psyche writhed around, fighting the inevitable, damn determined to avoid another rift like the one Ren had left. He fell and only managed to lever himself up to all fours with the power of spite and stubbornness. Dammit, his blaster...where was it? The reek of wet decay felt like a hand forcing his head towards the water, trying to drown him. 

_The tree, shimmering with the Force, its branches curving up and over his childhood home. Even though his parents couldn't be with him more often than not, the tree protected him, him and his grandfather. It turned black as he watched, gold and silver consumed by a gnawing parasite. The branches withered, scraping against the windows, becoming a diseased hand that at any minute would take the roof of their home and reach inside._

The breath in his body disappeared. His lungs crumpled against his backbone. 

**~Who are you?~**

"Get out of our heads!" Jess shouted, sounding shrill and scared in a way she usually didn't. The sensation of being spoken to in that way made his heart feel like a pilot who'd hit the eject button.

_And then found out there was no chute._

Only then did he notice that neither he or Jess had been eaten by a hungry rancor yet. He looked up and saw it sitting nearby, like a kriffing housecat. The sight was so all around _weird_ that it knocked him out of his...whatever that was. 

He forced himself to stand, and held his hands up to show he meant no harm. He scanned the area furtively, but he couldn't see anything that might tell him where the 'voice' had come from. Jess had decided to stay on her knees, but all the excitement had knocked her roughspun hood back. Her hair had gone all over the place, and her hands were clamped around her blaster. 

"Our names are Jess and Poe. We're looking for some bacta. Maybe we can trade." He said. He didn't have his blaster, and if Jess ended up needing him to cover her all he could really do was try to talk them out of a bad situation. Sure someone on Dandoran probably wanted _something._ Even a Nightsister needed goods and services, right? The fact that they didn't have much _to_ trade...well, they'd deal with that later.

The moment stretched to the point where he thought she'd decided not to show herself after all. But then, the tangled foliage ahead _parted_ , just like water, and Zawati Yala stepped out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the cliffhanger! I just thought it felt right to leave it there.


	5. Shadow

Poe expected a haggard old woman, warped by the Dark Side of the Force. Instead, Zawati looked like she’d been carved out of changeless, unblemished marble -well- if that marble were a rich dark blue. Her white hair, streaked with pink, made her damn striking, to say nothing of her white eyes. Eyes now fixed on him and Jess. Poe gulped.

At nothing more than a nod, the rancor came towards Zawati, only to lie down at her feet like a pet. He glanced over at Jess, standing there covered in mud with her mouth agape, blaster barely holding to her slack fingers.

“I see you’ve met Mathilde,” she said - luckily this time with her outside voice - smirking. Well hell, even a Nightsister had a sense of humor. “Bacta,” she continued, “your situation must be dire.”

As if the jungle itself waited on their answer, when Jess spoke the silence from their environment became all the more obvious. Poe looked around furtively; a quiet jungle never boded well. He should know, grown on Yavin 4 just like a maize stalk. Where were the parrots? The clouds of stinging garnants? Or well, whatever passed for those beings on Dandoran.

“Yeah,” Jess managed, holstering her weapon though Poe could see reluctance in her tensed up arm and hand. “It is.”

“Come in,” Zawati said, turning to head back into her house, a hut held together with vines and mud. She wore only a plain black robe, and Poe almost lost her in the foliage, though he focused on that white waterfall that was her hair to guide him. He couldn’t say he felt excited about going blind into a kriffing Nightsister’s nest, but hey, he knew this mission would be tough when he took it on.

He stood in the doorway, letting his eyes adjust to the play of light and shadow. At first, Zawati’s lair —he had trouble thinking of it as a house — looked fairly mundane, like every mud hut he’d ever seen. But soon, spell ingredients became obvious: a bejeweled skull, little jars of dried items - green, gold, mottled - only some of which Poe could name. She had a table up against the far wall, positioned so the skull would leer down at whoever sat there. Charts and illustrations sat in thick piles, an ink pen and its well beside them. A tea cup, a mortar and pestle, an ancient holocron, at the moment - thankfully - dormant.

_The grave goods of a bygone age._

Zawati took the overstuffed armchair near the fire, though the fireplace wasn’t lit. She seemed a little stiff; maybe she was older than she looked after all. With only a thought and a little flicker of the Force, the logs in the grate caught, filling the home with light and warmth.

“Well, sit,” she said, as if she couldn’t understand why they might hesitate to make themselves comfortable. He glanced over at Jess, and her wariness made him act. He hoped doing as Zawati bid might get Jess over her nerves. He took the chair nearest him, his head swimming with the Force. It lived in everything here. It did no matter where you went, but this bubbled up such that even he felt drunk on it. Nevermind that the brew had a distinct Dark Side snap, it was all too easy to settle into it. Somehow, Zawati’s Dark Side felt very different to Kylo Ren’s. “Surely you have a tale to tell me.”

“Do people come by here often?” Jess asked, incredulous. Zawati smiledm as if indulging a precocious child.

“More often than you think. The people here need a mystic, and they care little for the Light and the Dark. They care whether or not I can save their sick child, whether or not I can bless their crafts and crops. Though…none of that is nearly as interesting as bacta.”

“Look, we have a friend who is really important to us,” Poe started. Gods, the key to Finn’s health was so close and he desperately wanted it, found himself willing to do almost anything to get it. “And he got hurt fighting Kylo Ren. He’s in a coma and I don’t think he’ll wake up without bacta.”

“Kylo Ren?” Zawati asked, leaning in a little. “Hmph. I have little love for the petulant fool. He wields the Force like a babe playing with dolls. You say this friend stood against him?”

“Yeah,” Jess said, her eyes suspiciously wet. Everyone knew Finn and knew what Finn had done, how brave he had been. The notion that he might never get better weighed on all of them. “He did.”

“Let me read your minds,” Zawati said. as casually as if she were asking them to bring her flowers from the garden outside.

“What?” Poe spat. “No.”

Jess glanced at him, wary again.

“Do you want the bacta or not?” Zawati asked, as calm as a coiled up adder.

“Why do you have to do it that way?” Jess asked.

Jess didn’t seem put out enough for Poe’s taste. The last time someone had read him, he’d been left with a field of rotten starblossoms instead of a mind. Only the hope that Finn brought him had made him get it together, knowing that the Light had come to him in his most dire hour. It went just like his mother used to say it would, that at a time when everything seems hopeless, the universe had a way of sending help.

“You seem sincere, but I won’t trade away bacta on a false story.”

“Here, you can read me,” Jess said, and Poe nearly burst into tears. Was there any limit to what his friend would do for him? “Poe…last time…”

She faltered, probably because she wanted to preserve his privacy.

“Kylo Ren,” Poe started, struggling to get the words out. “He read me, last time we met.”

He didn’t think a former Nightsister could feel empathy, but Zawati looked horrified. She paled, and her cup shook until she set it down.

“I have immersed myself in both the Light and the Dark,” she began slowly, as if choosing her words carefully. “The serenity and peace, the destruction and rage. Sometimes, the people most dangerous to the galaxy are those who feel both, yet have a schism preventing them from melding. One must know the darkest depths of one’s soul, not just the light. With a conflicted soul, atrocities seem normal. I am sorry, for what happened.”

Poe’s reflexive response was to lash out; how many atrocities had Zawati committed, as a Nightsister? But when he met her level gaze, he saw that she had the kind of steady, strong presence that showed she had already had the same thought, that she’d been owning up to her crimes for longer than Poe had been alive.

“Come to me, Jessika,” Zawati said, and Poe realized Jess had never mentioned her full name. Easy enough for Zawati to read, on the surface of her thoughts. “I promise you, I will not hurt you. I can even make it pleasurable, if you prefer.”

Jess had the squinted eyes and gritted teeth of someone trying to push past their fear, but she nodded. Poe wanted to tell her to stop, that he would take the hit and not her, but his voice wouldn’t cooperate. She stood and went as Zawati bade her, the Nightsister reaching for her face with willowy, grasping fingers.

A moment as long as a lifetime passed, and Jess made a soft sound of enjoyment that somehow made Poe feel like more of an intruder than he’d felt when he’d sat in the same room while she and Nutrepa had their fun. Zawati stroked her hair with one hand, cupping Jess’s chin with the other. Her gaze held Jess’s; Poe doubted that Jess could have broken the contact even if she had wanted to.

The sudden intimacy held as taut as a rope bridge strung tight across a chasm. Poe felt as if he were trying to walk across it, as it swayed and dipped and threatened to spill him into an unforgiving white water rapid. Jess had become languid and pliant in Zawati’s grip, though to Zawati’s credit she didn’t take any kind of advantage…physically, anyway.

Eventually, she let Jess go, albeit with reluctance. Jess had that effect on people; they wanted to get close to her, one way or another. When he went out with her on their rare moments of leave, she definitely got more free drinks than he did.

Jess shook her head slowly, as if waking up from a drug-induced sleep. She slid to her knees, bowing her head.

“Poe,” Zawati said, petting Jess like a tame loth-cat. “This Finn, your friend. What are your feelings towards him?”

She must have divined Jess’s opinion, but still. Hearing it from him mattered; Zawati had dropped her facade, and Poe saw a hurt so old and so deep it inspired awe like a whirling galaxy in his solar plexus.

“Didn’t know him long,” he started, searching for the right words, “but we escaped the First Order together. When he walked into that interrogation room, it was like…like…”

He faltered, not wanting to offend a Nightsister of all people.

“You can say it,” she prompted, as Jess stumbled over to an empty chair and sat.

“It was like the Light Side had come in human form,” he whispered. “He knew I needed his help. Yes, he wanted to escape himself. But…and then, in that T.I.E., only a few minutes but…look, let’s just say I came out here for Finn. I came to bargain with a Nightsister for Finn.”

She smiled at that.

_Score one, Poe Dameron._

“If you love him,” Zawati said plainly, “the bacta is yours. That is the spirit in which I procured it, and I would send it with people who need it for that same purpose.”

Even Nightsisters loved, apparently.

“Don’t you want anything?” Jess blurted.

“Normally, I would. But…the Force seems to think your purpose is righteous, and more to the point, so do I.”

Poe tried not to think about the Dark Side approving of their actions much. He wanted to sleep later.

Zawati took a drink from her cup of kaf, hand steady now, her skirts neatly gathered over her crossed legs. Her expression looked strained, underneath the calm demeanor. The topic had to be a difficult one for her, if what little Poe knew about her was true.

“It’s not the only thing we need,” Jess continued. “We came for bacta, but we also have a mission.”

Poe winced, praying Jess wouldn’t make Zawati rescind on the part of the deal they’d already agreed on.

“Let us hear it, then,” Zawati said, looking every inch a grandmother about to hear her grandchild confess to breaking the living room lamps.

“A Grey Jedi,” Poe interjected, when Jess went back to wool-gathering. Zawati had done a number on her, one way another. “Name’s Jin-Array. A Vor. Uses male pronouns. That’s about all I know about him.”

“A Grey Jedi?” Zawati snapped, leaning in, eyes lit up with interest. “If he is truly Grey and not simply acting outside of the Jedi Code, he will have taught himself. And to do that, one must go searching, for the artifacts and wisdom left by the kages. Before the slaughter.”

“I guess he used to be part of the Jedi Order,” Poe mused. “Couldn’t imagine why he’d be having lightsaber battles with Darth kriffing Vader at the old Temple, if he wasn’t training there himself.”

“The training he may have received there would form a fine base for his future talents,” Zawati said, smoothing her skirt idly. “But he won’t get everything he needs from that. Being Grey necessitates other teachings. How can you walk the edge between Dark and Light, if you only study Light?”

“Do you know where he might go?” Poe thought of Kylo Ren, wondering how the Dark Side could ever be mastered without corrupting the user. His mouth went dry, and he hurriedly tried to focus on something, anything else.

“I do. In return I ask that your Rebellion comes to my aid should I need it. I always have a need for information, especially the covert kind.”

Poe felt instantly ill at ease, but Leia had to know they would be asked for something in return, if he and Jess met anyone who could offer the kind of guidance they needed.

“Within reason,” he found himself saying, though he had the unsettling sense that Zawati already had a favor in mind. Zawati chuckled, a deep, throaty sound he found himself liking against his better judgement.

“Of course, of course,” she agreed, too easily. Within reason was entirely subjective, he knew, but what else could he say?

“Then you’ll have what you want. We’ll work together if we need to. Now, the Grey Jedi?”

Zawati stood and went to her bookshelf, taking down one of the thick, leather-bound texts she had there. She beckoned them over to her desk, opening the tome. The vanilla-and-boot leather scent of aging pages hung around them came like a whisper from the past, while Inside, the information came mostly in pictures, drawings, maps. Poe couldn’t make sense of it; he figured you needed the Force to really puzzle out the contents.

“The stories say the first kage of the Grey Jedi went to a sentient planet to form his Order. Everything had a consciousness there, including the Grey Temple.”

Zawati intoned the information with the poise and power of a natural storyteller, and for the first time Poe wondered what she had been like as a Witch of Dathomir, before the Nightsisters.

“Eventually,” she continued, “the Grey Order devised their own ranks, trials, and traditions. It was on this planet that they had to pass their tests, including the Test of the Dragon Cave. If your Grey Jedi is trying to trace the footfalls of the past, he would have to go here. The Grey Order was forced to flee in the wake of what the Empire did to the Jedi, but the planet, and surely some of its artifacts, remain. Venture there, and you will find the truth.”

Zawati traced the path with the tips of her long fingers, and Poe could understand it, then, with her command of the Force as the catalyst. Quickly, he committed it to memory. Surely Leia would want to know where they were going next.

“Thank you,” Jess mumbled from where she still sat, flopped there like a stuffed toy with its limbs akimbo.

“Look, Jess is going to need some time to rest,” Poe said, “so maybe in the meantime I can help you with some things?”

It turned out even a Nightsister needed help tending her garden and sweeping her floors, which Poe did without complaint. He wasn’t sure if she’d set him at those tasks because she was too weary to do them herself, or if she just enjoyed watching him exert himself for her benefit. But either way, it pleased her, so what was the harm?

As night fell he stood in the garden next to the house, leaning on the rake he’d used to describe neat rows for vegetables, listening to a sleeping Mathilde snore nearby. The red moon hung low in the sky, and the stars, though unfamiliar, made him think of home. Though as much as he missed Yavin 4 and D’Qar…

_Some people carry home with them wherever they go. Or they find it in other people._

“We’re on our way, Finn.”


	6. Sickness

The slog through the jungle didn't improve the second time round, even with Zawati's directions. The bacta, packed tight into Poe's rucksack, filled him with anxiety. Those little vials felt so fragile, the way Finn felt fragile, the way Poe's sanity sometimes felt fragile. A swamp wasn't an ideal environment for such sensitive cargo, that was for sure, and he could only hope they'd get back to the ship sooner rather than later.

"Did we take a wrog turn somewhere?" Jess asked, pausing and peering into the gnarled, grown-together trees. She held her machete in a loose grip, the blade dripping green sap just as it had on their way in; no use taking their old path, as it had already grown over again as if they'd never sliced through. "I have a bad feeling about this," she added, looking around as if hoping for a sign to guide them. Even to Poe who had grown up in a similar place, the foliage had all blurred together into meaningless greens and browns and he couldn't think of anything that might help.

He turned slowly in a circle, hoping for anything that might guide them. A faint glint caught his eye off in the distance, the kind that came from sunlight hitting a building and refracting.

"There's something, Jess," he said, pointing. "Let's give it a shot. We'll just approach slow, get an idea of what it might be."

She shrugged but didn't argue, creeping forward as silently as she could manage with mud sucking at her boot soles. Poe resisted the urge to curse as he fumbled along behind her, studying his feet to try and avoid anything treacherous. That was all they needed, one of them to turn an ankle. An injury like that could be so banal and common yet still kriff up an entire mission.

"What the --?" Jess exclaimed as they came into sight of the building. Turned out it was one of several, set out in a regimented fashion like a lab or a government compound. It had seen better days, sure, but Poe could still detect signs of the Empire amongst the grasping vines; everything cut and constructed exactly the same, glass that caught and held the light and was as hard to get through as a knotty old dewback hide.

He stepped out of the jungle, walking cautiously towards the compound. He stopped at a pile of debris, searching it with his gaze for the source of whatever was glinting within it.

The Imperial symbol, a badge that had probably once rested against an officer's chest, peeked out from under his foot.

 _Imperius Unitada ober Totallex_. _Huh. Not anymore.  
_

_Never again._

"Uh, hey Poe?" Jess said, voice tight. He looked over to see her standing on what had once been the central landing pad, trying to swallow around what was probably a lump of fear. Her body looked as taut as a plucked string, trembling like a rabbit that had caught the prowling coyote's scent. Only then did he smell it too, a whiff of the worst smell on any planet, in any galaxy: the smell of death. 

The marsh on the far side of the compound yielded up its contents, a shambling horror so unexpected and disgusting that Poe backed up out of pure instinct, so quick he almost fell on his ass. The vaguely humanoid shape wore old Empire Stormtrooper armor, or well, pieces of it. One of its arms had decayed and fallen away, taking plating with it. The chestpiece had huge, ragged holes in it, showing dessicated flesh underneath. The thing's face would haunt him in his dreams till it was his turn to die, assuming he didn't get torn apart right here and now.

 _Shit._ His brain felt slow to react, too damned slow. _The bacta! We have to get out of here._

"Run!" Jess shrieked, and he thought dimly that he'd never heard her so afraid. He turned and started to rush back into the trees, only to be met by two more undead troopers, standing up out of their swampy graves. Without thinking he raised his blaster and punched two perfect holes into the one closest to him, only for it to sway, snarl, and come at him with its yellowed, jagged teeth bared.

"Don't let it bite you!" Jess shouted, taking a swing at the trooper who had rushed across the tarmac with its talons outstretched.

"What the actual kriff are these things?!" He said, struggling with two hundred pounds of undead... _thing_ , a creature that badly wanted to eat him. They ended up on the ground, wrestling for control. His blaster skittered away across the tarmac. The trooper's drool splattered into his eyes and he only kept from vomiting by forcing it back with all his will; any moment of weakness would get him eaten alive.

A head still clad in a helmet -albeit one that had seen better days - flew past his field of vision, a thick rope of black ichor following. Jess came running at him, machete upraised in both hands. She hacked mercilessly at the trooper trying to bite his throat out, until it fell still and rolled to the ground minus both its arms and half of its skull. She quickly dispatched its friend the same way, until everything stood quiet and still, coated in putrid gore. 

"Poe," Jess said, helping him sit up. "I've got shit news."

"Worse than _that?"_ He asked, shaking so hard his teeth chattered.

"Yeah. Those were undead troopers. Big deal on Dandoran; they invaded, blah blah blah. Secret Empire project to build a bioweapon. The Sickness."

His stomach wrapped around itself as the implications sunk in.

"We're infected," he said, wiping spittle from his face.

"Yeah." She said, and only then did he study her expression, an expression stained with body fluids that didn't bear thinking about. Her eyes were huge, twin moons. Her mouth had thinned into a tense horizon, and her hair hung in her face like a black night. "No bites, sure, but all of this gunk is almost as bad."

"Well, what do you we do about it?" He wanted to know, rolling his shoulders to make sure the pack was still intact. He wanted to hug Jess until her ribs creaked, but now wasn't the time. 

"Unless you want to turn into a ravenous cannibal in the next hour...Poe, we need to use the bacta."

"We can't! It's for Finn. He might never wake up without it."

"We don't have a choice," Jess said, gentle but firm. "We're no good to Finn as mindless zombies roaming around some forgotten Empire installation."

Hopelessness wrapped tight around his throat like an executioner's noose. He took the pack off and settled it in his lap, unwrapping the precious vials they had come all the way to the edge of the galaxy for. They gleamed in the sunlight, full of promise.

"What can we do for Finn without it?" He mumbled, trying not to cry. Jess' grip on his arm brought him some comfort, and she said,

"Look, we use this now and go find our friend the Grey Jedi, I bet he could heal Finn. If he's half the Force user Zawati seemed to think he would be, he'll be able to do it."

"All right," he made himself say. His hope had dwindled to a guttering candle flame, but he held to it anyway, tried to feed it and protect it. What else could he do? "Let's see if there are any changes of clothes hidden away here somewhere. We're going to have to wash this shit off before we treat ourselves."

Scavenging rustled up enough clean clothes for the two of them, hidden away in footlockers that the vines and marsh hadn't found a way to open. After washing off as best they could, Poe cracked the bacta vials, one for him, one for Jess. By the time he used it, a fever had taken root in his chest, and his head felt like a big ball of wet cotton. The treatment returned him to his former health, and only then did he really understand how close he had come to becoming just like the troopers that had attacked them.

He had the silliest urge to call for his mother like a little boy scared of the dark, wanting a glass of water and a hug.

"Let's get out of here," Jess said, and Poe had never heard a better idea in his damn life. They trudged away, exhausted, with new and exciting traumas to relive later at inappropriate times.

The sound of groaning soon came towards them, the growl of something starving that had just smelled food.

"Kriff, more of them?" Jess said, her hand, still clenched around the machete's handle, shaking with weariness. Their pursuers came into view, a whole compliment of them, yellow fangs, grasping hands, rictuses on faces that still had way too many human features for Poe's liking. Hard not to picture Finn like that, a hungry monster with half his body missing. The Empire really _would_ do anything to their soldiers, morals be damned. 

_Think, Dameron. How are you and Jess going to get out of this one?_

They were outnumbered, with weapons wholly unsuited to dealing with an entire group. They were already on the end of their energy, after the first fight. He glanced over at Jess; by her little frown, she was thinking the same thing.

"Well," Jess said as the troopers closed the distance, "let's at least take some of them with us."

_Finn, I'm so sorry. We tried._

A crash! crack! echoed from just to the left. Even the troopers paused, a fatal mistake on their part as four tons of pissed off rancor descended on them like a windstorm of claws and teeth, crunching through limbs and crushing heads as he and Jess stood in shock, frozen in place, eyes fixed on the carnage.

Zawati's Force signature came next, sweeping through like all the lights in a palace turning off one by one, plunging them into velvety darkness. Poe watched transfixed as a fleeing Trooper ripped apart in midair, like an X-Wing taking a direct hit. Limbs exploded outward and the torso collapsed, all at Zawati's command, like copal ash on an abandoned altar. She came out of the trees like a vengeful ghost, and Poe had never been so glad to feel the Dark Side in his kriffing _life._

Once everything was quiet, Mathilde settled down to eat the remains of her kills, and Zawati let the Force drain away until she seemed no more than a mortal woman. He didn't really realize he'd crumpled to the ground until he was already there, Jess rushing to his side to cradle his head in her lap. Zawati peered down at him, frowning.

"You used the bacta," she said, and Poe couldn't discern her feelings from the way she spoke. He could only hope she wasn't angry.

"We had to," Jess said. "We're not rancors who can ignore The Sickness."

"I know, child," Zawati sighed, grumbling when she noticed the dirty hem of her dress. "I would like to help you with your friend, but I am no healer."

Zawati looked like a goddess stood there amongst all the corpses, a Yavin crone surrounded by offerings. Maybe the association was what made him speak up.

"Come with us," he said, surprised at himself. "We could use your help."

"You wish a Dark Side witch to accompany you?" She asked, voice that dry, sarcastic thing that reminded him of a sandy bluff whipped by the wind, temple carvings worn down by the weather.

"You're not a kriffing Sith," Jess pointed out, trying in vain to wave the stench of the battle away from her face. "And now our Grey Jedi is FInn's only hope, so having someone around who can help us with all this magic shit would be good."

Zawati fell silent for a long moment, her face partially obscured by the veil of her white-pink hair. Then. she stood up straight, and squared her shoulders.

"I will. If your ship is big enough for Mathilde."

"We have to bring the rancor?" Jess exclaimed. "Shit. We had better find a planet full of prey animals or we're screwed."

"I know how to find her food," Zawati said. "Come. Dameron. Mathilde will carry you."

He thought he should, as a reasonable person, protest that arrangement. But clinging to Mathilde's broad, warm back comforted him, and he could swear he felt her trying to reassure him. Could rancors communicate? Could they think, like sentient beings? Zawati had implied as much. He reached down and stroked Mathilde's neck in thanks.


	7. Witness

"Kriff...Leia - shit, I mean General Organa - we found the bacta but..."

The radio gurgled and spit static, making anything the General might have said impossible to understand. Jess hammered the panel with her fist, but all she got was a shower of sparks for her trouble. She banged the earpiece against the pilot's console and shook it for good measure, but when she tried to make sense of the message again she got nothing but dead air. She threw the earpiece across the cockpit in frustration, leaned back in her chair, and put her feet up on the console. A bad habit she and Poe shared. But what the kriff did it matter if half the dials and buttons refused to work? It might as well be a footrest.

Autopilot was holding out at least. For now.

_At least if we have to steal a ship it will be pretty easy to do with a rancor on our side._

Speaking of the kriffing rancor, she stunk. And had very little room in the cargo bay at the stern, a situation that made her prone to roaring in frustration at all hours of the night. Jess groaned thinking about it, rubbing at her blurry eyes.  
She would have missed Zawati coming towards her she was so tired, but the Force aside, the woman's long skirt brushed over the tread plate as she moved. A small sound, but enough for Jess; she'd been across the galaxy enough times and lived through enough messed up situations to develop some instincts that operated whether she consciously accessed them or not.

Zawati took the co-pilot's seat without a by your leave, but before Jess could snap at her the witch thunked a mug of tea into the cup holder on Jess's chair.

"You didn't poison this, did you?" Jess muttered with bad grace, though the smell of crushed herbs and flowers was a welcome change. It had real milk in it too, though she didn’t want to think too hard about where that had come from. Did rancors produce milk?

_Ugh. Best not think about it._

She took a sip. If rancors _did_ produce milk, it was damn delicious milk.

"I am not above poisoning," Zawati said, and though she didn't turn to look at Jess' expression, Jess got the idea that she was amused instead of insulted, "but you haven't given me a reason. I'll drink from your cup, if you like."

"Naw. In for a wupiupi, in for a trugut. Already took a swig so if you wanted my choobies in a vice, I guess you got em."

“You know,” Zawati continued after a moment of silence, “I am no stranger to the Light Side. I used to be a witch, a clan leader, before I was a Nightsister. But even the Light can be used to do evil.”

Jess wanted to scoff, but not being able to ken the Force much in the first place kept her from opening her mouth. What did she know about it anyway?

“You don’t have to justify yourself to me. You help us help Finn, I’ll put in a good word. For all the good it’ll do you. I’m just a pilot.”

“But one of precious few,” Zawati pointed out. “One of very few to survive.” Zawati looked at her sideways.”It’s not all down to luck, Jessika.”

“How the hell would you know?” She snarled, feeling about as charitable as a starving fox nosing through snowdrifts. Zawati never looked offended by her little outbursts, which only annoyed her even more.

“I know,” Zawati said firmly, and they fell into a quiet that Jess didn’t want to call comfortable, just because she felt like being ornery and contrary.

“So what was it?” Jess said, after the silence had stretched just a little too long for her comfort.

“Hmm?”

“What made you turn?” It was too personal a question and she knew it, but kriff she hated having a Nightsister on their ship. Poe was taking it way too easy, had accepted Zawati’s presence with the kind of guileless warmth that sometimes got him in deep trouble. Hells, he was napping away in the hold right now, without a care in the damn world.

Zawati sighed and Jess wished she could take it all back, but before she could come up with something Zawati spoke.

“My clan…they were destroyed. I was to be their leader, after my mentor stepped down to enjoy her old age. I can still remember how it felt to stand there in the gathering place, the sacred chants making the earth beneath my feet vibrate. The pelt of leadership clasped around my shoulders, the headdress of raven feathers in my hair.”

She looked mournfully into her cup as she spoke, and against her better judgment Jess found herself bewitched by the story. Zawati had the voice of a true storyteller, a shaman, a chanter.

“Into one such gathering, death came. My…my bondmate,” Zawati tried, and to Jess’ astonishment she had to pause and draw a steadying breath. “He crash landed on Dathomir, and fell in love with both the jungle and with me. But his enemies pursued him, and slaughtered everyone they could find. We fled to the Nightsisters, only for them to be likewise wiped out. Some say only two survived. But they are wrong. Sacred things come in threes. I am the third survivor, and now, the only one left.”

“I’m sorry,” Jess whispered. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

Zawati turned to look at her, pinning her with that piercing white gaze.

“No, Jessika. I…while we do not see the Force the way the Jedi do, we Nightsisters were still beings of malevolence and evil. The only way to keep the balance within myself is to be honest about what we did. What we were.”

Jess wrestled with a sudden vortex of pain swirling somewhere deep inside her, such that she curled up in her chair as if trying to protect her core.

“I understand.”

_You must be their witness._

For a moment, all she could smell was jet fuel and chemical fires, roasting flesh and burnt hair. The interior of the cockpit faded out, replaced by X-wing pieces scattered across a tarmac that had turned into a charnel house.  
A touch on her hair made her all but jolt out of her seat. Her mother used to do that, when she needed comforting, and it was so unexpected it made the past take its leave as easy as that.

Zawati was gazing at her, arm still outstretched.

“Did…did you do that?” Jess managed, feeling about as clear headed as she did after a night of binge drinking in a pilot’s swill house.

“Did I use the Force?” Zawati said, pulling her hand back. “No. I didn’t need to.”

“Then how…?”

“Do you think I have never seen the marks a galaxy-wide war leaves on people? Ha. Too many times to count. There are precious few winners in this excuse for an existence.”

Silence descended again, but this time, Jess decided maybe Zawati wasn’t so bad after all.


	8. Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe, Jess, and Zawati head out to find the Grey Jedi. However, sailing is never smooth in this galaxy...

Jess opened her eyes.

She wasn't inclined to, after being relieved from a too-long shift by a too-tired Poe. But...what? She felt the thin mattress of her bunk, the hard plating underneath digging into her shoulder. She was used to that, though...she'd slept in worse conditions without waking.

The relative darkness had fuzzy edges, the glow from the cockpit like a passing spirit in the hallway beyond her room. She wanted to let that warmth comfort her, lull her back to sleep. The herb essence she'd put on her pillow called to her, trying to get her to put her head down again.

_No. What the hell woke me up?  
_

She pulled her blaster from under the thin blanket and stuck it in the band of her underwear.

 _Doesn't hurt to be prepared._ _I'll just go check the rest of the ship quick, then back to sleep.  
_

Maybe the rancor had woken her up again. Probably nothing. But...

She had one foot on the floor when every klaxon in the damn ship started wailing at once, and she shot down the hall and into the co-pilot's chair. Poe was only a step behind her, still wearing his skivvies, a cup of kaf sloshing over his hand. Zawati crowded in, grabbing the handhold behind Jess' chair as Mathile roared from the stern.

"What is it?" Zawati demanded, the Force snapping and coiling around her like a massive Kodashi viper. A _pissed off_ massive Kodashi viper. 

"Hell if I know," Poe shouted, pounding at the pilot's panel with his closed fist. It worked too, the instruments lighting up blue and green. "Damn sensors are on the fritz."

Jess caught Zawati peering out the viewscreen, but she got the distinct impression that Zawati wasn't really looking with her eyes.

"There is a Force user nearby," Zawati intoned, and a moment later a boarding ship loomed in front of them, its metal mandibles open and ready to chew through their defenses. "It is..." She shook her head as if she couldn't make sense of an elaborate puzzle, but Jess didn't have the luxury of worrying about what was going through Zawati's head.

"This thing doesn't have enough juice for the shields _and_ the cannons," Poe exclaimed, his fingers dancing across the panels. A thing Jess always admired about him, how he could just be  _on_ at a moment's notice. "Evasive manuevers and power to the shields."

Jess punched it in. Zawati hit the wall as the craft lurched, her fingers slipping from the handhold. Jess realized that Zawati probably hadn't been on a ship in years and dimly noted down that she would have to apologize later.

The boarding ship had a dull red paint job that managed to make it look even more imposing. It drew closer despite Poe's efforts to shake it, menacing lights blinking around its open maw. She'd always thought standard boarding ships looked like hard dicks, sculpted by an artist way too in to his own uh, _equipment._

_And its going to fuck us dry._

The boarding ship passed by the viewscreen, and a moment later the cockpit shuddered hard enough that Jess felt like her brains might scramble. If she hadn't been sitting already she would have joined Zawati on the floor. 

"Ready your blasters," Zawati murmured, and when Jess looked over the witch was floating a couple of inches off the ground. Jess felt the Force in her back teeth, like she'd bit right into a sansanna spice pod and turned her whole mouth numb and tingly. "We are about to be boarded."

"The _hell_ we are," Poe said, and though he coaxed their bucket of bolts ship into maneuvers that Jess felt sure no pilot Resitance _or_ First Order could match, the craft itself had limitations that kickass piloting couldn't fix. Jess' panels died, as if they were trying to prove her point. She shook her head, pushing away from the dead instruments. She got to her feet, following Zawati out into the hall. Jerking her blaster from its makeshift holster, she put her back to the wall and moved along it, ready to fire at a moment's notice.

Poe's shout from the cockpit was the only warning before every light on the ship went dead. She had to admit, it scared the shit out of her. Another shudder such that she thought the ship might come apart before they even _got_ boarded. A whoosh from the belly of the ship, and whoever was on their asses was _in_ their asses. She closed her eyes and prayed for a moment, and when she looked up Zawati had produced a lightasber from under her dress.

But the first sword to light up wasn't hers. A red blade pushed back the darkness, and Jess saw a face so beautiful it confused her; she didn't expect a Force wielder like this to be beautiful. She thought maybe the intruder was a Twi'lek, but the fuzzy illumination hid the majority of their enemy's features.

"Be gone, fool," Zawati growled, igniting her lightsaber in response. Jess expected red, a color she associated with the Dark Side, but no. This one had a blade of pure sea-blue. Only then did she realize that maybe it wasn't a saber Zawati had built for herself.

 _Death came._ Zawati's _voice,_ memories from their last talk _._ _His enemies pursued_ him, _and slaughtered everyone they could find._

That lovely face twisted into a rictus of disgust, contempt in their enemy's eyes. Yet, those eyes passed over Jess.

_Does she not realize I'm here?_

Possible. Zawati's Force presence could have easily shrouded everything else. 

" _I_ am the fool?" The voice sounded female, but it had an odd, sibilant quality. "A sorceress of such talent allying yourself with these _worms?"_

Before Zawati could answer a full compliment of soldiers filed in behind their enemy. Jess half expected buckethead armor, but no. Just nondescript blackened red. 

_Oh stars,_ Jess thought, faint. No way could they take a force user _and_ their backup.

Zawati tried anyway. The sabers clashed together, caught, slid apart in a shower of red-blue sparks. That massive serpent, her mastery of the Force, struck. Soldiers went flying as if she'd gone into a child's playroom and swept all thw toys off the shelf, the crunch of bone and armor echoing in the cramped hallway. Jess barely muffled a scream when one of the sabers caught the wall, tearing a hole in the duraplate. Wires hung free like severed veins, and the guts spit fire.

_Shit, if the troops don't get us the damage to the ship will!_

She thought she heard Poe yell from the cockpit, but she couldn't make any words out over the cacphony. The twi'lek had Zawati on the ropes, forcing her out into the big room in the dead middle of the ship. Those soldiers that could still stand did, rushing after the two Force wielders. How long before someone stabbed Zawati in the back?

Jess forced herself to stand, bracing herself against the wall. The cool air reminded her she didn't have a hope of stopping a blade or a blaster; she might as well have been naked.

Mathilde roared. Jess ran.

She slid under Zawati's sword arm, dashed across the length of the room. An errant blaster bolt cut across right in front of her; two more moments and she would have had to execute her plan without a face. She fired back without looking, slapping her bare soles on the frigid metal of the hold as she rabbited away into the darkness at the stern. Mathilde had absolutely lost it, throwing herself against the confines of her holding cell.

Jess reached a shaky hand up towards the locking mechanism.

_Just don't eat me, okay?_

She threw the switch.

Mathilde came thundering out, just as Jess felt the ship _shift,_ and roll. The boarding ship disconnected; she could feel it in her body, so used to taking in data from whatever ship she was flying that day that Poe's efforts felt obvious. She took off, following the rancor with her blaster up and ready. The ship's shields held, keeping the wound the boarding ship had left bandaged for now. 

She picked off a soldier about to ambush Zawati, the blaster bolt landing right between his eyes. The twi'lek was about to break through Zawati's guard, but Mathilde had other plans. The twi'lek shrieked like a little girl, barely managing to twirl clumisly away from Mathilde's enraged charge, unable to raise her saber for two precious moments. Mathilde picked her up and shook her, then threw her broken, lifeless body against the far wall. Only Zawati's quiet command kept the rancor from eating her whole.

Mathilde laid down as gentle as you please, as if she hadn't just utterly destroyed another living thing. As Zawati stood panting with exertion, Jess went up to one of the soliders that was still twitching and shot him twice in th head. She turned and went over to the twi'lek, kneeling down to peer at her. She had a tailored black robe on, but not much else in the way of obvious identifiers. Her only concession to fashion were the black bands fashioned around her moss-green lekku, and a gold chain around her neck.

Poe came running in, still naked except for his boxers.

"Is everyone okay?" He asked, taking in the scene with wide, disbelieving eyes. "Who in the kriff is that?" He asked, jutting his chin out to indicate the twi'lek's broken corpse.

Just as Jess fished the necklace out to look at the charm, Zawati said,

"A Knight of Ren."

Jess turned the pendant over. An intricate black and red sigil. A mark that the Knights wore, or something simply of personal importance to their enemy?

"What? How do you know that?" Poe wanted to know. Jess saw his face go parchment-white.

"I read her mind," Zawati said, sliding down the wall to the floor. "Or more accurately, I ripped it apart with no thought of putting it together again." A pause. "She nearly bested me," Zawati grumbled, and Jess felt sure she and Poe weren't supposed to hear that last bit. "And besides, who else would have the desire and the knowledge to find you?"

"How in the hell _did_ they find us?" Poe wanted to know. "This ship is scrubbed."

"That, I do not know," Zawati said, closing her eyes and tipping her head back to rest against the bulkhead. She had to be exhausted. 

"It shouldn't be possible," Poe continued as if he hadn't heard Zawati speak. Jess thought he looked beyond flustered. More like personally pissed off, and annoyed that he couldn't answer his own question. "I mean, I know we're not in hyperspace, but...unless? The Force?"

"Highly unlikely," Zawati said, and this time Poe looked over at her. "I have been shielding us since I came on board."

Jess stuck her blaster through the band of her underwear again and lifted her hand to wipe sweat from her brow.

"Look, if it's the ship," she started, having to work to form a coherent sentence. "We need to dump it somewhere. Damn thing is about to fall apart anyway. I'd like to mail the kriffing body back to Kylo Ren, too."

"All right,," Poe said, with that tone that said he had recommited himself to the mission at hand. "I'll look for a likely place to exchange ships. And by that I mean steal a new one."

"Sounds good," Jess agreed. "Zawati, take my bunk. You look wiped."

"I think I shall. Thank you." Zawati mumbled, and when she started to walk back down the hall she weaved like a person who had chugged one too many sonic screwdrivers.

Zawati was already gone by the time Jess looked back into the belly of the ship.

"Oh shit...whose going to put the _rancor_ back to bed?"


	9. Burial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group learns more about the sentient planet and how to find it

"Thinking about them, huh?"

Poe's voice didn't exactly startle Jess; it was too familiar for that. But it did surprise her after several hours of companionable silence, sitting in the cockpit together, lounging in their chairs in defiance of those old Republic behavior standards that got into a pilot’s head down to how they polished their boots and bloused their trousers. Poe had caught her out, too. She'd just been assigning a name to each passing star, every pinprick of light a dead Resistance fighter.

"Yeah."

No point trying to put Poe off and besides, he'd asked because he was doing it himself. She didn't even have to know him as well as she did to know that.

"Yeah," he echoed, gazing out the viewscreen. "Eventually, we're going to run out of pilots. And heroes. All that heroism and we're barely hanging on."

Jess felt silence descend again, but this time it felt heavy. A snort of laughter came out of her a moment later, though:

"Do you remember how Ello could only fly if he'd touched those stupid lucky dice of his?"

"He always loved to stroke his face tendrils like some old wise man and tell us all such bullshit," Poe agreed, kicking back in his chair and studying space through the uppermost viewing panel. "I never get lost, I am one with the darkness, blah blah blah. You know, my ancestors were learning to fly when you were still eating food off the ground! When you were sleeping wherever your puny claws could scrape out a bed, we were building cathedrals!"

Jess laughed.

"L'ulo?" She prompted, mimicking Poe's posture.

"Damn, L'ulo. He always had some piece of advice to hand out. It always felt like whatever he said, my heart was like yeah, that's what I've been waiting to hear. I wouldn't even know I needed the lesson till he opened his mouth. That was a rough one. He went out how he would have wanted to, but it wasn't just losing someone close to me. It was like a piece of my mamma died with him. They were so close."

Jess watched Poe fiddle with the ring on a chain around his neck--Shara Bey's wedding ring -- and she raised her hand in a toast, only belatedly realizing she wasn't actually holding a drink. She'd had to make that funeral gesture too often over the past while.

"Fucking glad Snap is still with us or I woulda gone spare already," She muttered.

"Yeah. Him and Kare." A pause so long Jess wondered whether Poe wanted to end the conversation. But then he said, “Sometimes, I think old Oddy was the bravest one."

"A traitor?" Jess spluttered. Hard to feel sorry for Muva when pilots who had never betrayed them were just as dead as he was. Yeah he’d just been a tech and they’d maybe failed to protect him from First Order blackmail, but _still._

"Maybe so. But the second he had the chance, he did the right thing. Over and over, he did the right thing. Shit, Jess. They had his wife. Easy to say we'd never do what he did when the people we love are out there free."

 _The ones who aren't space dust. Like_ L'ulo _._

She bit down against the bitterness pushing against the backs of her teeth. Wouldn't do any good to speak on it, and Poe felt as shit as she did about that death, if not moreso.

"Maybe," she growled, picking at the stuffing sticking out from the arm of her chair. The ship barely held together, but her tired heart couldn’t manufacture any anxiety about. Either they’d make it to their next destination before the thing fell apart around them, or they wouldn’t.

"Me and Snap wouldn't even be here if it weren't for Oddy."

"Shit, your bantha-bacon wouldn't have been in the fire in the first place --"

Something about the look on Poe's face made her drop it.

"Who is it, Jess?"

She knew what he meant. What was her worst loss? Who did she feel the worst about, the death that kept her up at night and dogged her steps during the day? She’d never really told anyone that story, but why the kriff not? She trusted Poe implicitly, both as a commander and as a friend.

"Before I met you, I had my own flight. Raven flight.”

"You never told me that."

Jess shrugged, staring blankly ahead.

"Didn't want to. Wanted a new start in Black flight."

  
"I get it. I don't think about Muran too much if I can help it."

It was no secret that Poe had been in love with Muran, even if nothing came of it. Jess thought something would have, though, if Muran hadn't been shot down.

"One of my squad, she burned to death in her ship. Managed to land it, but we couldn't get her out in time. I think about it a lot still."

An understatement. She had jerked out of jet fuel-soaked nightmares more than once, and sometimes she still thought she saw Coralis in crowds or in the background of holovids. The others, their deaths, had hit her hard, sure. Losing your whole Flight did that to a person. But Coralis ruled her, dictated her subconscious and visited horrors on her sleeping mind on such a regular basis Dr. Kalonia had been forced to give her tranquilizers.

"Shit," Poe breathed. "I'm sorry. That's kriffing terrible."

A simple statement, but it soothed her; sometimes what she wanted most was for someone else to validate how truly terrifying it had all been.

"Hey," Poe added. "don't blame yourself. You'll go crazy that way."

She nodded, but privately, she felt it was already too late.

* * *

The nearest planet, they ditched the ruined ship in one of the lakes. Jess had looked it up and, with such a high salinity, the water would corrode the poor little freighter in no time (to say nothing of the Knight’s corpse). Poe hated to leave any ship no matter how shit to such a fate, but they had no other choice. Luckily this craggy mountain region had a lot of hidden places, thanks to the terrain, and as far as he could tell no one even noticed their arrival. Plus, it gave Mathilde a place to roam around and hunt.  
  
Getting a new ship proved ridiculously easy with Zawati around. The markets here were also hidden in those funny little mountain pockets, amidst air temperate and crisp, the purple grass manipulated into concentric circles that Poe was sure had some meaning lost on him. He couldn’t even put a name to this planet, but Zawati reacted to it like she’d always lived there; even the markets being multi-level didn’t slow her down. He watched her climb the various rope ladders between stalls, and he had an odd sense she wasn’t even using the Force to do it. The stars, green like Canto Bight liqueur, made her glimmer and shine as she went.  
  
Once Zawati found flat ground, it only took her a moment to recognize a ship trader with a battered YT-1930 freighter half-covered in a tarp. She dispensed with speaking to the trader themselves, an alien whose species couldn’t be determined for sure under its big hood. She waved her hand the way Jedi often did in stories, though she did so in an imperious manner that communicated that it was more habit than something she needed to do; the ship was theirs no questions asked.  
  
As Poe jogged up with Jess behind him, Jess still cursing as she tried to navigate the ladders, the merchant had already given Zawati the deed. Poe tried to suppress a shudder. The Force could be terrifying. When she turned towards him, for a moment he saw Kylo Ren’s cruel, dark eyes in her cool, cobalt face.  
  
A few crates of supplies and he and his companions were gone like a Hutt’s compassion; so quickly it was debatable whether they’d actually been there at all.  
  
“Doesn’t it bother you?” Jess bit off the words as they went into the belly of their new home, Mathilde reluctantly following them up the ramp. After a chance to stretch her legs, she plainly didn't want to go back into the cargo hold. “Just…fucking with their mind like that?”  
  
“I’m happy to discuss my morality - or lack their of - once we’re on our way once more,” Zawati said, not even looking back at Jess when she spoke. Mathilde broke off to go to her bed, and Poe felt that little spark of static electricity that he associated with the Force; Zawati and Mathilde must have been speaking to one another through it. “But in short, they would have tried to take advantage of us, had I let the interaction play out as they had scripted it. I merely bypassed the hours of arguing portion of the event.”  
  
“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Jess muttered. Poe kept his mouth shut. Bitching and moaning wasn’t going to help their situation and Zawati was right about one thing, at least: time was of the essence.  
  
The cockpit was bog standard and Poe had no trouble getting them into atmo and then into the big wide open. Though since they’d approached the borders of Wild Space he’d felt more and more on edge, as if the unmapped blackness had a malevolent sentience. Where in all that mess would they even find a planet that could think and move itself around how it pleased?  
  
“A Force trance,” Zawati said when he expressed his concerns to her. “If it still lives, I should be able to find it. Though these things go better if you have helpers.”  
  
Despite what Jess had said to Zawati earlier, she piped up before Poe could even ask what that meant.  
  
“I’ll do it.”

Zawati turned to look at her, and Poe thought it was possibly the first time he’d seen anything approaching shock on Zawati’s face.  
  
“I mean, as long as you don’t need to eat me at the end like a spider or anything,” Jess added. As Poe watched, she blushed. For the first time Poe wondered at her willingness and the reasons for it.  
  
“It needn’t be so permanent as all that,” Zawati said, and it took Poe a minute to catch up to the innuendo. He was famously impervious to flirting, but only because he almost never noticed it happening. He rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the panel of flight instruments, glad that this time they appeared more functional than the the ones in the ship they’d ditched.  
  
_Hell,_ he thought, setting the ship to cruise, _surprised they haven’t fucked yet._  
  
He knew what Jess was like, let alone Zawati, who reminded him of a spider on a regular basis. Jess had well and truly wandered into that web, even if she wouldn't have admitted it.  
  
“Come then,” Zawati said, standing and offering Jess her hand. Jess took it, letting Zawati draw her out of her chair.  
  
“Okay,” Poe called out as they disappeared down the hallway, “I’ll just….be here. You know. Piloting the ship."

They didn’t say anything back and, watching them walk off hand in hand, he doubted they’d heard him at all.

"Heh. You kids have fun," he said to the empty air.

* * *

 

“Thank you, Jessika,” Zawati said as they left the cockpit, and even Jess who half the time felt real uncharitable towards her had to admit the witch sounded sincere. Jess stopped in the dusky hallway; they hadn’t bothered powering up all the lights in their eagerness to continue their journey into Wild Space.  
  
“There’s something between you and me, isn’t there?” Might as well just say it outright. Zawati frowned, and Jess thought she looked afraid, or all things.

 _My bondmate...his enemies purused him, and slaughtered everyone they could find._  
  
“Yes,” Zawati admitted. “The Force link can have that effect. But regardless of what I said back there, it needn’t be anything more than a blip in the Force.” She sighed, pressing her hands to her eyes for a moment, then added, “Despite what you may think of me, there are limits to what I will inspire another being to do.”  
  
That, and some kind of kriffing secret.  
  
Jess knew there had to be more to Zawati’s story than they knew. The witch carried it around with her everywhere she went, weighting her steps and bowing her shoulders.  
  
“Look,” Jess said, “it won’t hurt to make this Force thing a little easier, will it? No strings attached if we don’t want them.”  
  
This time Jess took Zawati’s hand, leading her down to where the sleeping quarters were. Jess was damn glad that the freighter had them, not just for comfort but because she never felt quite comfortable in anything more luxurious than a bunk. At one point she’d gone on a mission where she had to sleep sitting up in a bunk made for an alien a lot shorter than her, and she’d gotten so used to it she still craved dark, tight spaces to sleep in.  
  
“The mind will try to impose structure on our trance,” Zawati was saying, and Jess thought she caught the barest edge of a tendency to babble when nervous. “You may see things that will upset you, to say the least.”  
  
Jess nodded at the bunk and Zawati shed her royal-blue cloak, revealing a form fitting dress that looked as though it had been spun by an orb weaver spider. Jess had never really noticed Zawati’s body before, not like this, but the dress called the eye to every curve and angle. The cloth covered almost all of her, and yet it was so damn suggestive she might as well have been naked.  
  
Jess took off her roughspun cloak and undid the simple belt tied around her waist to keep her tunic in some kind of order. She didn’t take everything off; weirdly enough, she didn’t want to make Zawati uncomfortable...if it was possible to make a Nightsister uncomfortable. She climbed into the bunk, sighing at the simple pleasure of laying her head on a soft pillow.  
  
“Well? Join me if you’re going to,” she said, and Zawati crawled into bed with her, mute. Jess turned towards Zawati and half by accident and half by design their bodies fit against one another as if it were meant to happen. Instantly Jess felt herself react; it had been a long while since she’d fucked anyone and though she didn’t think that was what she and Zawati were here to do, she couldn’t help but respond to Zawati’s soft, full form.  
  
In the velvety darkness, it was easy to feel like they were the only two people in the world. Zawati had a heady, musky scent that made Jess involuntarily lift her hips and spurred her to put her arm around Zawati and draw her as close as she could possibly get. She smelled the ghost of ritual herbs in Zawati’s hair, and the touch of Zawati’s lips on the hollow of her throat was as soft and sweet as a slice of chiffon cake. Jess beckoned her upwards, and the moment their lips met, the Force cocooned them both and the bond was sealed.

* * *

  
“Where the hell are we?” Jess whispered, standing in a lush field dotted with wildflowers. She turned slowly, taking in the powerful river nearby, singing as it rushed over its rocky bed. The edge of a forest stood to her right, full of trees that pulsed with ancient power. The sky was a pale robin’s egg blue, yet three moons hung there like lights on a string.  
  
“Dathomir,” Zawati said. It took Jess a moment to pinpoint the source of the voice. When she did, she saw Zawati standing at the head of a waterfall some paces distant. “I usually begin here.” She turned her face to the sky and added, “I am the last Nightsister. You stand on the bones of my sisters, Jessika.”  
  
Jess shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, studying the ground. What was she meant to feel about the destruction of an evil cult? Yet, the ground felt…almost alive under her feet, or maybe it felt undead; that seemed more accurate. It was as if the dead were only slumbering, waiting to be summoned from their graves if only someone would sing the right song over their heads.  
  
Zawati descended and came towards her. Jess wanted to shrink away, but her pride wouldn’t let her. Zawati took her hand and when they touched, an arc of Force energy leapt between them.  
  
“Most will tell you that the Force is a thing that can be encompassed in two sides, Light and Dark,” Zawati said, leading her around the river and into the trees. “But really, the Force is well, a force of nature. It is growing green things, and yet also it is a flood. It is a clear sky with benevolent suns, yet also it is the endless desert sand that claims so many lives. Where you choose to wander influences your choices.”  
  
Jess felt a pang of fear; being lead into a forest by a Nightsister didn’t sound good on paper and it was even worse when it was really happening. Still, Zawati’s cool hand, like carved alabaster, kept her calm despite her instincts insisting Zawati shouldn’t be trusted.  
  
“I dunno,” she whispered, those huge trees closing in on her like a coven of leering sorceresses. “I’m about as Force sensitive as my X-wing.”  
  
“No, everyone is in essence Force sensitive. It binds all things.” Zawati intoned. “Try to leave your mind as blank as possible. I will draw on you for the power needed to find the planet we seek. But you have no reason to fear. I swear on the bones of my sisters and Clan, I will not harm you.”  
  
“I’ll do my best,” Jess promised, though she had trouble keeping her mind clear even on her best days. Still, the forest almost demanded it of her, as if every step stole another thought from her brain.  
  
“Where are you?” Zawati whispered, speaking, Jess thought, to the sentient planet itself. Jess found herself stumbling through utter blackness with only Zawati’s grip to guide her, the scenery dropping away as if she'd just hit hyperdrive and gone screaming into a featureless tunnel. A moment later Zawati came to a sudden halt, and for a long moment Jess couldn’t even hear her breathe. “Such great pain…what has been done to you?”  
  
Jess fell to her knees, and Zawati gripped her by the shoulders, as if the witch was afraid she’d just float away like dandelion fluff. The Force poured into Jess relentlessly, a frigid, singing river, like the one she'd seen when she'd first entered the trance. She strained against Zawati’s hands, the pure…fucking magic leaving her utterly open and vulnerable. Her body thought so too, an orgasmic pulse of pure Force making her shake and gasp. She ended up on all fours like a panting dog, overwhelmed.  
  
She could hear the ritual drums, pounding through the earth and into her chest. Rattles hissed and shook above that rhythm, held in ritualist hands. The image resolved after a moment, a ragged band of Dathomirian women, clad in animal skins, standing around a pool so clear Jess could see right to the bottom. A body lay in state on the bank, her white hair. so like Zawati’s, fanned out against the rich loam. Somehow Jess knew that these others had taken the time to weave feathers and beads into that whitewater rapids-hair, humble things but affixed with reverence.  
  
“Ventress,” Zawati said, and with the sound of her voice Jess could perceive the witch standing beside her there in that scene from the past. “One of the three. Ventress, Talzin, and myself. She died a hero. At least to me. Her body was consigned to the waters. In the end, she rejected evil.”

"Why?" Jess whispered, the word scraping against her vocal cords.

"For her lover," Zawati told her.  
  
Jess didn't respond. Instead she found herself walking towards the water, her mind a jumble, her feet moving of their own accord. She knelt, peering into the pool. A severed head floated to the top and a scream froze in Jess’ paralyzed throat; she recognized it. Coralis, Raven Three, who flew at Jess’ right when all their X-wings went streaking by in formation. Coralis, who died burning alive in her crashed ship. At night and in moments of fear, she could still smell all that jet fuel, and the stink of burnt flesh.  
  
“Coralis,” she sobbed, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

 _Coralis had screamed for what had felt like hours. It took her so long to die._  
  
Another body, bloated, death-white. She already knew who it would be, Surusata, Raven Two, shot down only to be ejected into the vacuum of space, freezing to death while her eyes burst and her lungs wrung out like dirty cloths. She felt the urge to walk into the pool, to lay down and die alongside the rest of her Flight.

_Why me? Why am I alive?_

She asked as though the Force itself would answer. What had _she_ done, to deserve life? When all those good pilots had died?  
  
“Jessika,” Zawati said, voice imbued with power. Jess felt Zawati embrace her from behind and forcibly drag her away from the water. The real world asserted itself with an audible snap, and she found herself weeping against Zawati's chest.  
  
“Jessika,” she said again, this time softly. “It’s all right. We’re done for now.”  
  
“I saw them,” she blurted, lifting her head to look Zawati in the eye. “Stars, they were…”  
  
She couldn’t voice the horror, a lump of emotion catching painfully in her throat. Zawati held her until she couldn’t cry anymore.

* * *

I spoke to it,” Zawati said, sitting in her chair with all the gravitas of a towering oak. They’d gathered in the galley of the ship so Zawati could explain what she’d figured out about their target, and already tension was strung taut amongst their tiny group; Jess knew they’d have to do some edgy shit to get where they were going, and Poe and Zawati knew it too.   
  
Poe had his arms folded on the table, his expression open and weary in contrast to how guarded Zawati seemed. He had to be questioning his skills, whether he could get them to their destination safely. Poe knew how good he was, but he also never let it go to his head. He would attempt this, yes, but he knew the dangers, too, all the places even the slightest of things could go wrong and kill them all.   
  
“And I believe I can find it.,” Zawati continued, “but it requires a sacrifice of us.”   
  
“What?” Poe said, alarm creasing his brow and widening his eyes. “What kind of sacrifice?”  
  
“The test of the Dragon Cave. All Grey Jedi of the particular tradition in question must undergo it. Within, you will face your demons. Furthermore, the planet has been scoured down to the bedrock. I am not clear on whether that is the work of the Empire or the First Order, but I am guessing we aren’t the only group who knows of this Grey Jedi. It’s possible they are tracking him through the Unknown Regions, destroying whatever they find so no other such Force user can benefit from it.”  
  
Poe slammed his fist on the table, making Jess jump. Zawati looked down her nose at him. The expression was subtle but Jess thought it meant she was about as taken aback as Jess herself felt.  
  
“Bastards,” he muttered. Jess knew Poe well enough to know he’d had that opinion ever since Muran had been shot down in front of him, but knowing Finn had made it all the more real, more real for all of them. She rubbed at her eyes, stinging with tears at the thought of Finn locked away in that medical pod. How many more bucket heads were like him? Never given the chance to be people, so brave and compassionate and shit under all the programming? Dying for the kriffing First Order, nameless and faceless?  
  
“Stars,’ Jess whispered. “Couldn’t be worse than what I already saw.”  
  
Zawati’s mournful look downturned her full mouth and made her drop her gaze. Jess reached over on impulse and took her hand.  
  
“Wasn’t your fault.

“Nonetheless,” Zawati said, lifting her head and gazing at her. Jess’ mouth went dry; in that moment, fearsome Zawati reminded her of a blooming pansy instead of a frightful witch. “I am sorry. It was not my intention. Dathomir will always be an emotional subject for me. I may have let that bleed into you to the point where you could see your own sadnesses.”  
Jess shook her head.  
  
“I signed up to help you. Don’t worry about it. Really.”  
  
Poe cleared his throat, and Jess took her hand back.

“If you have coordinates for me Zawati, now’s the time.” He said. Jess knew that look, like an akk-dog with a bone. Poe was practically vibrating with the need to act, and _now_.  
  
“Of course,” she said, standing and arranging her skirts. “Let us make haste.”  
  
Jess watched Zawati follow Poe as he lead the way to the cockpit. She remembered how it had felt to share a bunk with her, a comforting thing somewhere between being mothered and being fucked. Maybe the witch would stay with her tonight, too. 

_Hell's bells, no denying it once someone makes a Force bond with you. Might as well see where this goes._


	10. Moonlight

Poe calculated, then calculated again. He wished not for the first time that BB-8 had come along on this one; Poe was good at maths, but nothing compared to a droid. And no droid was better than his buddy. Still, he had to admit at the end of all his work that BB-8 would probably tell him the same thing: actually getting to the sentient planet wouldn’t be easy.   
  
“You look like you need to take a shit.” Jess’ voice from behind him made him shake his head. He didn’t even bother to look at her, though the calculations he’d scribbled on both sides of the paper he’d dug up from the galley had started to swim and twist into nonsensical shapes. He still stared at them as if at any moment they'd offer up a secret that would make getting to this damn place a pleasure cruise instead of an absolute ball-buster.   
  
“I wish this could be as easily taken of,” he muttered, finally looking up from the equations. He’d done them with the computer, in his head, and by hand, just in case.  
  
“What’s the problem?” She asked, hanging from the safety grip set into the ceiling. No co-pilot’s chair in this model of freighter. She unwrapped an energy bar with her free hand and gnawed on it joylessly, but it didn’t seem to bother her much even though Poe knew from experience how terrible those things tasted. Hell, given what her mornings were usually like she was downright cheerful.   
  
“The planet has moved itself into uncharted space. I guess it can do that,” he said, shrugging. He’d have to get used to even more weirdness than usual to make it through their mission, so he just did his best to accept it. A planet that could think and chart its own course through space only a handful of living beings had ever seen? Okay. Just dandy.   
  
“Sure, why the hell not right?” Jess said, brushing crumbs off her shirt. Zawati had insisted on buying more clothing for everyone, as if whatever they might find in Uncharted Space would care what they covered their bodies with. Still, Poe had to admit Zawati was not at all lacking in the presence department, and fashion was part of that. Presence could get you access when other things had failed.   
  
Even Jess had let herself get decked out in embroidered vantablack gaberwool and sturdy Crosh-hide leather, geometric Emori patterns picked out expertly on the buttery surface of her boots and gloves. Zawati had done Jess' hair for her, too, so that they both wore a style involving elaborate Dathomiri knots and braiding such that they might as well have been warriors about to ride out to battle.   
  
“Yeah. And it’s not going to come to us. Doesn’t trust us enough for that. Which means a series of hyperspace jumps that make my asshole clench just thinking about them.”   
  
He studied the freighter’s controls, not for the first time. The reality of what he would have to accomplish made him see every flaw, every shoddy circuit and loose knob. It wasn't so much that he worried for himself; he held Jess and Zawati's lives in the palm of his hand and at the moment they felt particularly heavy.   
  
“Hey, c’mon. What kind of hotshot are you?” Jess asked, though by her tone she was trying to build up his confidence instead of tear it down.   
  
“Give me a break, Pava!” He said, without any real heat. “One jump, sure. Two, fine. But eight? Even Luke kriffing Skywalker couldn’t do that.”   
  
“He probably can,” she pointed out. “How the hell did he get to wherever he is otherwise? With no one able to find him till us? And even then it took a stupid amount of effort and danger and death and bullshit.”   
  
“You have a point,” he conceded, albeit with bad grace. He offered up a little prayer that Rey would be safe on her seeker's path. He didn’t know her, but he knew how important she was to Finn and how much her mission mattered.   
  
“You think the freighter can make it? It’s one thing to steal a ship on a podunk planet, but if we need better it might not be as easy as Zawati waving her hand.”   
  
“Might make more sense to upgrade what we have.” He mused. As if on cue, a musty smell rose from the pilot’s chair as he shifted his weight. As if he wasn’t already cataloguing every flaw in the entire place.   
  
“Yeah and I want to stop somewhere and check every inch of this damn thing for trackers,” Jess grumbled. “I mean, just in case. Might not do any good but it’ll make me feel better.”   
  
“Sure. We need food and water too.”  
  
“Well, we have the space. One advantage of having nicked a freighter.”   
  
Even Mathilde seemed pleased by the upgrade, often napping contentedly in the starboard compartment even though she had to be hungry by now. Poe dearly hoped she wouldn’t be adversely impacted by all the hyperspace jumps. He might not enjoy having a rancor on board, but she was sentient, a feeling being who could contemplate her own suffering. He had a responsibility towards her. Besides, Zawati loved her. That was good enough for Poe.   
  
He pulled up the galaxy map and punched in the coordinates he liked best.   
  
“All right, Jess. Go and sit in your girlfriend’s lap till we get there or something.”  
  
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Jess snapped, in a way that reminded him of children teasing one another on the playground after school.   
  
“Yeah, okay,” he said at her retreating back in an aggravating sing-song. She flipped him off without looking back at him, and he laughed himself sick. 

* * *

  
They stopped on a tranquil resort planet this time, because why not? Poe figured they might as well have a day or two of swimming in the warm orange ocean under the ever-present quadrangle of white moons, punctuated by acquiring ship upgrades however and whenever they could. Normally Jess didn’t have anything against trading sex for whatever they needed, but this time she hesitated. Of course Poe would never pressure her to do anything she didn’t want to, but he did wonder at what had changed.   
  
_Because of Zawati, maybe?_  
  
Poe had to consider it, especially watching them chase each other through the surf. He never thought he’d see imperious, aloof Zawati act like a Yavini teenager on holiday, naked as the day she was born and gamboling around like a puppy. Jess’ hair was free and long down her bare back, floating like a banner in the humid breeze as she and Zawati all but played together like kids. Watching Jess act so happy made his own heart swell up with joy, like it always did when something good happened to his best friend.   
  
He watched them from where he’d stretched out on the glimmering pale sand, and for a moment he could imagine that they weren’t about to undertake something only a handful of people had ever attempted. He indulged the fantasy, imagining that instead of piloting through Uncharted Space, they were all going to meander back to some fancy hotel and drink too many blue drinks.   
  
Jess snapped him across the belly with her rolled up towel, making him yelp and jump to his feet. He hadn’t even seen her coming.   
  
“What the hell!” ‘  
  
She threw her head back and cackled with glee.   
  
“Sorry, sorry. The opportunity was just too good.”   
  
“I hate you.”  
  
“No you don’t. You love me!” She insisted in a sing song, getting him back, he thought, for poking fun at her earlier. When he leapt at her she took off down the beach, laughter mixing with his as he tried his best to run on such fine sand. When he caught her they went tumbling into the waves together, laughing and splashing, pushing each other into the water and watching the other come up spluttering.   
  
_Force, if you listen to ordinary pilots, keep us safe._


	11. Vantablack

“Jess?” Poe asked through the communication channel between the cockpit and the gunner’s position. The radio spit white noise for a moment and even though he knew Jess would answer, a number of nightmare scenarios flashed through his mind during that few seconds of waiting. Things had gone so totally tits up so often it would have been impossible not to worry.  
  
“Roger,” she said, an unmistakable note of excitement in her tone. He envied that. Yes part of him —the part that made him the best pilot in the Resistance— looked forward to what they were about to do. But another part, the part that was responsible for his ship and crew, shrilled a warning that made his skin prickle and his breath stick in his chest.  
  
He brought the freighter around slowly, dipping through empty space, the freighter’s stern-most engines like a whale’s flukes breaching an ocean’s surface as it dove deep. Zawati stood behind him, ready to help. She had silver-white tribal markings under her eyes and across her nose, dots and lines that accentuated her sharp features and deepened the already dark color of her skin. She turned that moon-white gaze on him when he glanced back at her, her hair an elaborate plait that she wore draped over her shoulder. A warrior’s braid; maybe what a ship couldn’t do, the Force could.  
  
“Now is the time for courage, Dameron,” she said. She probably didn’t even need the Force to guess his thoughts, his pointless, circular apprehension. “Whatever we might find there, it is good to look forward as well as to the past.” A skein of pink had escaped from its tie, giving her an odd girlish quality when she moved her head. He considered what he knew of Zawati; if anyone could say those words with authority, it was her.  
  
“Do you sense anything?” He couldn’t help himself, wanting some kind of sign. Like most pilots, Poe had his superstitions. Breathing on and buffing out his lucky gold coin. Both sides had Mon Mothma’s image. He liked to think that meant he’d never come up tails in the field, too. Tucking his mother’s wedding ring under his shirt, the chain cold against his skin, the ring as hot as a supernova. Used to be wearing his favorite jacket would be the third thing, but that belonged to Finn now. He’d take something, anything from Zawati in its place.  
  
_I hope I get to see you again, Finn._  
  
The unbidden thought caught him unawares, making him swallow reflexively around a knot of emotion.  
  
“The wilds of Uncharted hyperspace makes it very difficult to predict what might happen or whether we will find enemies there. It is a good idea to always assume things will go wrong. That said, you are a very talented pilot and Jessika can more than adequately man the gunner’s station. I am well versed in the Force and will help you as I can. The ship has been upgraded, and as of right now I can detect no enemies at our backs. We are as ready as we will ever be.”  
  
Poe never would have imagined a pep talk from a witch actually working, but it gave him the boost he needed. He plugged in the first series of coordinates and their ship jumped into that place between time, the stars becoming streaks of light before burning out. They found themselves skimming the outer rim of known space when they came through the other side, a skipped stone that flipped, turned, and evened out in the span of an eyeblink. Zawati’s Force signature settled around him like a heavy cloak of velvet and whuffa wool, keeping his stomach from trying to eject itself across the cockpit the way it dearly wanted to.  
  
_Stars, I wouldn’t want to try and get that out of the seats._  
  
“Ugh,” Jess muttered into the radio.  
  
“Sorry, mi hermana.” He said, trying not to sound as queasy and shaken as he felt. “Only six more to go!”  
  
“Gods, you are _such_ a comfort,” she growled. Poe could practically hear how green around the gills she must have felt. He tried to block it out just in case it made him throw up after all out of some kind of misguided gastrointestinal sympathy. “Nothing on my scope, in case you were wondering.”  
  
“Good. Let’s hope our luck holds.” He studied the output computer, the panel chugging as it tried to keep up with the processing power needed to puzzle out and use the calculations he’d so painstakingly entered. Once the display unstuck itself, he sent them hurtling down the next hyperspace tunnel. Being a great pilot wasn’t all tricks and fancy stunts. Sometimes it had as much to do with knowing how to navigate the warren of hyperspace tunnels turning space itself into a hopeless tangle of routes, everything from the tiniest back paths to the biggest thoroughfares.  
  
The second jump made Poe realize they shouldn’t have just been afraid of finding something, as finding nothing. He looked around him in a slow panorama, from viewscreen to viewscreen. _Nothing._ There were stars, yes, but they had a worrying ephemeral quality and it seemed as though their light had been generated somewhere very far away from their little freighter. He felt like old sailors must have felt, utterly alone on a sea of glass.  
  
“Take heart,” Zawati whispered, and he found himself glad of her ritualist’s voice. It could instill noble feelings, when she chose to wield it. “I sense a great portent ahead, but we will rise to meet it.”  
  
The saying went that in times of stress a chill would go down the person’s spine, or the hairs would stand up on the back of their neck. But Zawati’s words coupled with her Force presence made him feel like he’d found himself at the bottom of an abyss, and whether he’d ever climb out remained to be seen.  
  
“Bad guys?” He asked, hand shaking as he punched in their next jump. “First Order?”  
  
“It…” Zawati trailed off, and when he glanced back at her she was frowning. “Yes and no. It’s possible that the lives I am sensing have at some point had a relationship with the First Order. But my mind can only reach so far and reveal so much.”  
  
“Jess, keep your eyes peeled. Zawati is sensing some kind of enemy out there.”

“You got it hotshot.” Jess said, chipper in a way only a looming battle could make her, nausea already  (apparently) forgotten. “Don’t care who it is. I’ll blast them out of the sky just like everyone else who’s dumb enough to get in our way.”  
  
“Here we go,” he said, hitting the button that would take them to the next destination. He felt the lurch as they locked into the hyperspace tunnel, then the rush of the ship taking to it like a fathier to a racetrack.  
  
_Okay. We are going to be okay._  
  
No sooner had he thought it than a shearing noise penetrated deep into his eardrum, and the freighter shook like a gazelle overcome by a pride of lions. It spiraled out of the hyperspace tunnel like a hydroplaning speeder, and Poe lost control of it for an agonizing second.  
  
“What the hell are those?”  

Jess said, her voice shrill with fear and tight around the edges. Poe looked out the viewscreen only to see that they had jumped into the middle of an alien fleet. He didn’t recognize the make, sleek, imposing needle-ships made of a material he didn’t recognize, either. It looked like an oil slick, or a big hunk of hematite. Energy shifted and rippled over the hulls, a sickly rainbow of ominous hues.  
  
“Attendant ships,” Zawati said. Poe could clearly read her shock and awe.  
  
“What the kriff is an Attendant?” Poe asked, desperately trying to coax their freighter into evasive maneuvers. Good thing too, because the area lit up with laser fire a bare moment later. He saw that he and one of the ships had collided, leaving a furrow of copper-colored fire on the enemy vehicle’s belly. Warnings blared from his nav computer for a moment before he turned them off, cursing.  
  
“They carve their own hyperspace tunnels,” Zawati said, voice having picked up speed and color as their situation got worse and worse. Poe forced the ship into a slow, rolling dive, two of the enemy crafts peeling away to chase him. The freighter’s jury-rigged canons coughed up light, one, two. A third craft had to pull away to avoid the shots, a small comfort. “They are masters of Uncharted Space.”  
  
“They sure don’t like company,” Poe snapped, barely avoiding a fourth fighter. Zawati’s hand, suddenly tight on his shoulder, nearly made him leap out of his skin.  
  
“Look,” she said, and even though she didn’t raise her voice everything inside of Poe stopped dead still. He did as commanded and for a moment, he couldn’t see anything beyond the flash of lasers and the fleet of needle-ships scattering like a kicked wasp’s nest. But then it came to him, a dark spot in a place that was already dark, vantablack on the black of space.  
  
“The hyperspace tunnel,” she said. “Take it!”  
  
“The ship won’t make it!” He shouted, sure in his bones that an Attendant’s tunnel would rip their humble craft apart. Something about it wasn’t made for mundane things like freighters, or people, for that matter.  
  
“It will!” She said, pounding his shoulder with her fist. “Go!”  
  
He shot the ship forward, a soul beset by demons running for hallowed ground. The Attendant crafts came together into a clump and came after them, lighting up space with their precision lasers. Zawati’s Force signature rose like a tsunami, but instead of washing over them it gripped the freighter, guided it; Poe could feel the moment where their craft hit the hyperspace track.  
  
They _leapt…!_  
  
For an eternity, Poe forgot who he was, _where_ he was, and _why_ he was. It felt like he’d become a wandering sentience, disconnected from anything that could have given him form and shape. Images started to assert themselves, but they were filmy and stylized. Leaping-salmon-feathered-serpent-the faces of friends both dead and alive, transforming into gods and spirits with jaguar masks and cloudy wings.  
  
When he came back to himself Poe found Jess crouching over Zawati, slapping her face lightly and pleading with her to wake up. He wanted to stand and help, but he felt welded to his chair.  
  
“Zizi, please,” Jess whispered. Poe could hear Zawati come around, her groan sounding about as shit as he felt. He couldn’t even turn his head for what felt like at least one lifetime, and only when the lassitude gripping his limbs started to drain away did he detect the kind of mark on the galaxy only utter destruction could leave. He rushed to the viewing panel and cupped his hands around it, as if doing so could force the image to focus and make some kind of sense.  
  
“Stars,” he breathed.  
  
“What is it?” Jess asked, looking over from where she was helping Zawati sit up.  
  
The planet filled the viewing panel as they locked into orbit. A ruined, pockmarked mess, laser weapons had burnt away its flora and fauna mercilessly. Giant trenches bit deep into the earth, scorched bedrock and volcanic glass making the surface look jagged and dead. But it wasn’t dead; that would have been a kindness. Even Poe could feel the agony wracking the sentience tied to the world below, pulsing with suffering and trapped into a half-life Poe wouldn’t have wished on even Kylo Ren.  
  
Settling Zawati in the now vacant pilot’s chair, Jess joined him at the window.  
  
“Oh no,” she breathed, hands pressed to the glass in a way that made her look like a child who had witnessed something a child should never have to see. “I knew, but…”  
  
“Did the First Order do this?” Poe wondered, though of course who but the First Order had this kind of planet destroying fire power? The Resistance might have taken out Starkiller Base, but the First Order was still far from toothless.  
  
“The planet would not have lead us here if it did not believe we could help it,” Zawati said. When Poe looked over at her she had her eyes closed and was leaning back in her seat like she’d come down with the Findris flu and couldn’t muster the energy to even so much as sit up straight.  
  
“Let’s get down there,” Poe said, though he could have thought of a thousand things he would have rather done, including cleaning all the latrines on D’Qar and butchering nerf for mess. He turned and reached over Zawati to punch in their landing path, and the ship limped slowly downwards into hell.

* * *

 

Jess followed Poe, Zawati leaning on her. Zawati was taller, but at the moment that hardly seemed to be the case; she’d wilted like a Monta Blanca orchid caught out in a farmer's summer field as soon as they’d arrived. Some of it was sending them barreling down the Attendant tunnel (and skipping several of their planned jumps), but every step on the planet’s ruined surface felt like they were pouring salt into a raw open wound. If even she could feel it, it must be all the more harmful to Zawati, who had the Force.  
  
Mathilde brought up the rear, sticking close. Normally a rancor would have been the best companion they could have hoped for, but the slagged ground made for uneven footing at best even if you happened to be an apex predator.  
  
“Hey Poe,” Jess called, coming to a halt and helping Zawati sit. “I need some help here.”  
  
Poe turned and rushed back to them without hesitating. Jess leaned against Zawati, suddenly exhausted herself. Mathilde stood nearby stamping her feet, casting a nervous eye to the horizon.  
  
“Hey Zawati,” Poe tried, crouching down to study her face.  
  
“I’m sorry, my love,” she said in a broken whisper, not even focusing on Poe as she spoke. “I’m so sorry. Where are you? Why won’t you come to me?”  
  
Jess hugged Zawati hard enough to squeeze all the air out of the other woman’s lungs. What else could she do? Zawati always carried her lover with her like an anchor, the chain wrapped tight around her throat. Jess knew she couldn’t be the one to free Zawati from that, but even if her best was just an embrace, she would give it.  
  
“She’s just worn out,” Poe said. “You know how it is.”  
  
She did. Pilots didn’t get a regular sleep schedule at the best of times and after awhile you got drunk on it. Your filters went first, making you stumble around base and tell people exactly what you thought of them. Then you lost your fine motor skills, until you had to take a good three tries to buckle your flightsuit. Eventually, you started passing out at random times. It wasn’t so unusual to see sacked out pilots curled up on top of supply crates and sprawled out in their cockpits, waiting for the signal to take to the air.  
  
“Got any kaf pills?” Jess wanted to know, and to her horror Zawati started to cry. Never would Jess have expected her of all people to _cry._  
  
“It’s okay, Zizi,” she added, taking off her roughspun coat and putting it around Zawati’s shoulders. “Here,” she said, uncapping the bottle of pills Poe held out to her. “Take a couple of these and you’ll be your old self in no time.”  
  
Thank the stars, Zawati took the pills as meekly as a child. Jess managed to get Mathilde to lie down, and then she leaned Zawati against Mathilde’s flank. Jess could see the exact moment the stims hit her: she sat up and looked around as if she didn’t recognize their surroundings, alarmed until she focused in on the two of them watching her with matching worried expressions.  
  
“I am sorry,” Zawati whispered, bowing her head.  
  
_Is she…ashamed?_  
  
Another emotion Jess had never expected to see on those elegant features. She put her hand gently over Zawati’s.  
  
“Nothing to be sorry for.” She reached over and patted Zawati’s braid into some semblance of order, earning her a tremulous smile. “Hells, I can’t believe you did that. I’m surprised you aren’t dead and gone.”  
  
“I am too,” Zawati said, rueful. “Nonetheless, it seems we did make it. Give me a moment, and I will see what I can find out about our quarry.”

* * *

 

“Is that him?” Poe murmured, watching the image Zawati had called out of the very earth. They hadn’t found the remains of the Grey temple yet, but the Force still lingered in pockets here and there, pockets Zawati could reach into and rifle through. This particular one lay like a lake of illumination in the middle of a fairy ring that had somehow survived the scorched earth protocol  
  
_Or it sprung up_ afterwards _._  
  
Something about that thought made him shiver.  
  
The ghostly image drew his eye, rotating slowly in Zawati’s open palm. Poe didn’t know much about Vor, but he knew they were generally spindly and ethereal if the few pictures he’d scrounged up were worth anything. Not _this_ Vor.  
  
A male that reminded Poe more of a Komodo dragon or a monitor lizard appeared in the panorama as if he’d stepped onto a stage, powerful digitigrade legs making short work of the shimmery terrain. He stood mostly upright but had a slight swayback and a little bit of a forward posture like a raptor, probably to compensate for his long, thick tail, and a burly, proud chest. He wore a Jedi-style robe with cutouts for his wings. One of those wings dragged, crippled, and he could see that Jin-Array’s hand (more human-like than Poe had expected, somehow) on that side didn’t move as deftly as the other. Poe thought for the third time that he might vomit, studying the ragged remains of what had once been a limb; lightsaber burns. He’d seen the one on Leia’s arm, once, and the one down Finn’s back that didn’t bear thinking about.  
  
_He can’t fly._  
  
Poe felt a pang of sorrow; he could only imagine how Jin-Array must have felt.  
  
“As far as I can tell, though the percentage of Vor who find themselves searching for ancient Jedi wisdom is surely rather small,” Zawati said, making Poe feel thoroughly stupid even if her tone hadn’t sounded sardonic. That was the thing about her. She didn’t need to sound mean to make you feel as dumb as bantha shit.  
  
He returned his attention to the Force image. Jin-Array had taken his hood back, revealing a surprisingly expressive broad muzzle and huge dark eyes. Though Poe couldn’t see what he was looking at thanks to the limitations of this kind of spell, clearly Jin-Array had found something he classed as damn interesting; the long spines on the back of his neck stood up like a cockatoo’s crest, and then he reached up and out of frame. Jin-Array turned his head as if towards the sound of someone else’s voice a moment later. The picture stopped there, like a pirated holovid that only had half its files.  
  
“That’s it?” He asked. Zawati snorted in disbelief from where she sat propped up against Jess, Mathilde slumbering at their backs.  
  
“Is that it, he asks me? After I have applied more Force knowledge than he’s ever even considered to getting information from an all but dead planet?”  
  
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, holding his hands up. “Not what I meant.”  
  
“He was here,” Jess mused, speaking slowly in the way she did when she was gnawing on a problem. “And before all…. _this_ happened,” she finished, waving her hand to indicate the scorched planet surface.  
  
“Perhaps the First Order knows of his efforts and has a team pursuing him,” Zawati said. “Or did, at the very least.”  
  
Poe drew his legs to his chest, wrapping his arms around his knees. The land beneath him felt reduced to dust, like the kind found in mausoleums. He had never felt such a thing before, and his heart ached as he thought about Yavin 4 and its living, breathing jungle. His mind flashed to Leia, watching helplessly as Alderaan blew apart in front of her, the Hosnian System, Jedha City…atrocity after atrocity.  
  
“Can we find out more here?” Jess wondered, looking up hopefully at Zawati.  
  
“If we continue our journey, I may find other memory shards,” the witch allowed, “and if the legends are true the Grey Jedi Temple and the Dragon Cave may still exist. They are said to be very resistant to damage, and the magic there means not just anyone can waltz in and take what they like.”  
  
“This isn’t a full scale planet sweep either,” Poe said. “After Starkiller they don’t have the firepower for that. If it happened before, they could have only spared so much and still kept their superweapon project on track.”  
  
“Stars,” Jess whispered, voice shaky. “It’s plenty terrible anyway.”  
  
“Let’s keep moving,” Zawati said. shading her eyes and peering over the horizon. “We mustn’t let despair rule us.”  
  
Poe stood up and brushed the dust from his trousers, though really it just stirred the damn stuff up and it caught unpleasantly in his nostrils. He and Jess fell in behind Zawati, Jess with her hand on the butt of her blaster, dark eyes flicking here and there.  
  
Around them evidence of what the planet had once been lay scattered around, reduced to slag and rotten matter. Poe felt horror reverberate through his boot soles; this planet had been alive, and not just like every planet was alive. It had been —still was — a person, sentient.  
  
“Do you think we could…you know. Bring it back to life?” Jess whispered, as if she’d heard his thoughts. He glanced at her, her long, thick braid glimmering in the pale light of the wan, too-close moon, its luminescence caught in her eyes the way it had been in Zawati’s eyes back on the ship. The moon reminded him of a concerned eye, too, as if its owner found itself wondering the same thing and had peered close to spot any signs of re-emerging vitality.  
  
He focused on Zawati’s back, her hair standing out like a frozen waterfall against her midnight-colored dress. She picked her way unerringly through what remained, as though trying to tread lightly on the aching, open wounds on the planet’s surface.  
  
“Maybe,” he allowed, though he didn’t know a single thing about sentient planets. Still…he looked around, noting rotten material that had once been trees and plants, at the very least. He was no gardener but he knew something from living in a jungle; rot meant potential life. Maybe the planet’s sentience waited for re-emergence too, below the ruined surface.  
  
“Here,” Zawati said before he and Jess could continue their conversation in any meaningful way. She lead them into a ruin, only barely perceptible as something that had once been a building. The First Order might not have had Starkiller on their side when they’d done all this, but Jess was right. Whatever they did have had been more than enough.  
  
Zawati reached down into the arid earth, passing her hand over the ground. Whatever she’d felt there seemed to please her, since she knelt; primly, for someone who was bound to get dirty no matter what.  
  
Jess stepped up to cover her and Poe saw how automatic it was, without Jess even having to consult anyone or think about it much. Jess drew her blaster, keeping it low in a double-hand grip. There weren’t many hiding spots for anything that might attack them, true, but the very destruction visited upon the planet had created crags and hills and crevices that an enterprising predator could still hide in.  
  
Zawati raised her hands as if she were cradling an offering bowl, the Force kindling like a survivalist’s spark between her fingertips. Poe could hear her measured breaths as magic pulsed through her body, the Force gleam becoming a beacon before she let it go. The twisting flame set itself in the earth, whirling for an eyeblink before forming itself into another image.  
  
Jin-Array still had his hood down, and his face became more animated than the last time Poe had seen him as they watched. He was gesturing, excited, what looked like a holocron tucked under his arm.

_That's damn odd for a Vor._

Poe couldn't call himself an expert, but everyone knew the Vor as emotionless unless, perhaps. they were making music.

Jin-Array was clearly speaking to someone, but the person remained frustratingly out of frame.  
  
Just as Poe thought that, the other being came into view as though they’d just walked into a room, the borders of what could be seen through the Force imposing a sort of structure on what they were seeing. It was a view from behind, but enough so that Poe could tell they were a human, or maybe an enhanced human. They looked generally male, though that could end up meaning everything or nothing; gender came in all kinds of shapes. He (for lack of a better pronoun) had longish hair tied back in a tail, and though the Force image rendered everything in shades of blue and white, Poe thought it had a couple of grey streaks in it.  
  
The image shut off like a movie ending.  
  
“Damn,” he snapped. When Zawati and Jess looked over at him in surprise, he shrugged. “I really want to know who that is!”  
  
Something about it had latched on to his subconscious mind, as if one part of his brain were teasing the other, as if it at any moment the answer would be revealed if he just thought about it hard enough.  
  
“Perhaps we will yet find out,” Zawati said, standing and brushing off her long wise-woman’s skirts.  
  
**Tree-talker.**  
  
The voice made Poe come up hard, an X-Wing smashing into a mountainside. It was like Zawati speaking into his mind when they’d first met, but it was the difference between atmo and the vast possibility of open space.    
  
The planet. It had to be.  
  
**Help me.**  
  
“Uh, Poe?” Jess asked, voice unsure. it took a long moment for her words to penetrate. When he looked over at her and Zawati, Zawati had fixed him with a knowing gaze.

“Er…I think the planet is talking to me?”

“No shit,” Jess breathed, her eyebrows climbing right into her hair.  
  
“What do I do?” Poe asked, shrugging. He had no context for what was happening to him and didn’t see any shame in asking for help.  
  
“Reply,” Zawati said simply. “Write your message in your mind, and then send it. Put your will into it.”  
  
“Okay okay,” Poe said, rubbing his fingers through his hair as he tried to focus.  
  
**How? Tell me what to do.**  
  
**Come to the Dragon Cave. I will guide you.**  
  
Before Poe could ask, the location impressed itself on his mind like a symbol pressed into soft wax. He oriented his body to it without even thinking, a sense of purpose tangling up around his heart.  
  
“Let’s go,” he said. Jess, Zawati, and Mathilde followed him like a parade of devotees on the path to a holy site.


	12. Facade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The test of the Dragon Cave takes Poe's little band on a series of unexpected twists and turns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poe's Dragon Cave journey 
> 
> Thank you to Tiff and Avery for beta reading

Poe could feel the land under his boot soles as if he and his friends were climbing all over a sleeping person’s prone body, which, he supposed, they were. The planet’s sentience had curled up in the back of his mind like a panther, one with a mutilated paw and an infection in its lungs. It wheezed and whimpered, begging for help one moment and death the next.  
  
_Its eyes are still fierce._  
  
He could hear Zawati panting with exertion behind him, stumbling along with Jess at her side. It knocked something loose in his head.  
  
“Why the hell is it talking to me and not you?”  
  
“I can sense it,” Zawati mumbled. “But I’m not the key to its healing. You are.”  
  
The Force tree. It came to him immediately, without a moment’s effort on his part. It had to be because he’d grown up under its branches, infusing him with some kind of Force sense or another, apparently. Enough that the planet had recognized it, had spoken to that part of himself.  
  
**Tree-talker.**  
  
Images flashed through his mind, coming home covered in mud after a day of playing, the Force tree glinting as he walked up to the house, a glorious crown of shining silver leaves. His father telling him not to fear nightmares or monsters, because the tree protected him and his family. Him and Ben Solo chasing each other around its trunk, playing at being Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker for hours, their found deadfall as real to them as the lightsabers they were meant to represent as they clashed and strove against one another.  
  
A pang of sorrow made his heart whimper, half-frozen in a desolate snowbank.  
  
“Sure hope there’s something we can do for it,” he allowed, ash describing each of his footfalls in mute testament to the death and destruction that had taken place here. Hardly so much as a breeze came to mar the edges of those ridges and whorls. Even the weather had suffered. What was weather, to a corpse?  
  
_To a sleeping vampire, more like._  
  
Poe easily recalled the stories of a Jedi so corrupted by the Dark Side that he had to eat pure Force in order to survive. That one had kept him up nights for months.  
  
They trudged on, not speaking. Wandering in this place meant fatigue and listlessness, such that Poe worried on more than one occasion that they’d strayed too far from the path. Or whatever passed for the path; he was going by feel, silently asking the remnants of that waiting sentience to guide him.  
  
In a moment he found himself cresting a dusty hill dotted with animal skeletons. Perhaps they had survived the direct bombing only to die of their wounds, skeletons preserved where they’d fallen; it looked as if some of those animals had been hit mid-stride. Obsidian jutted out of the ground, a testament to the sheer firepower that had been visited on this area. Nothing remained and yet, somehow, he could clearly see the temple ahead.  
  
“Whoa,” Jess whispered. Poe found himself nodding in agreement. The temple had seen better days, but that it retained a recognizable facade at all was a miracle. It’s broken columns and pockmarked steps still gave shape to the interior, and the roof still sheltered the main chamber.  
  
Sudden, bone-deep homesickness awoke in Poe like a fever as he came closer, close enough to see the carvings. Faces, so incredibly detailed and yet ravaged by canon fire, birds, rivers, the long, undulating lines meant to depict a zephyr. His fingers found the images, following the lines that told a story not unlike those found on Yavin 4; he could remember tracing and re-tracing one of his favorite carvings at the closest temple to his childhood home, a jaguar partially obscured by stylized clouds. What tale could be found here, for those who knew how to interpret the depictions?  
  
**All that remains.**  
  
Sorrow hit home as deep and sure as if an AT-AT had stepped on his chest, the stronger, more fractious twin to the pang he’d felt earlier. He stumbled and leaned against the wall, only realizing belatedly that his hand had found another carving: an eagle. A spirit that embodied many noble things, but it was the healing aspect that came first to Poe’s aching mind. For the temple, the planet. For Finn.  
  
_For Ben,_ his traitorous heart whispered.  
  
Zawati’s touch roused him, and a moment later he felt Jess’s grip on his wrist. He turned to them and dissolved into helpless tears, crying in abject grief as they both held him. Thoughts of his mother swirled through him, a ray of moonlight entering a river. Zawati’s touch on his hair felt like his mother’s and he all but collapsed against her, Jess hugging him as fiercely as she’d held Zawati earlier.  
  
When he couldn’t cry anymore Zawati all but set him on his feet, her strength always a surprise but a welcome one just now. He rubbed at his face, trying to set himself in some type of order.  
  
“Kriff…don’t know what got into me there,” he muttered, reluctant to look at either of them after a display like that. He leaned back, the carvings biting into his skin through the thin material of his standard issue shirt. The grey Force vibrated in the very cells of the earth here, the walls, the rubble, and what little bit of Force sensitivity he had opened and hummed with it such that for a moment he couldn’t remember how to see or breathe.  
  
Zawati took his hand, and Jess took the other. Together they walked in, the mummified heart of a temple in torpor coming to life as they went into a chamber that hadn’t seen a living being since stars only knew how long.  
  
“There is a spirit here,” Zawati said, voice pitched low to match the gloom. “A Force ghost.” She paused, probably, Poe thought, to consult with or study it. “I don’t think she will appear to us until we have finished our task.”  
  
It chilled Poe’s blood to think a ghost might be watching them, but he felt hope too; if anyone would know where their Grey Jedi had gone, it would be a spirit that lived in the very stones of the Grey temple. He found himself longing for more, for some kind of sign that people had once lived and learned here. Was it him that wanted that, or the ghost?  
  
“Hey,” Jess said, giving his hand a little squeeze before letting it go. She went across the room, faint shadows on the stone where prayer mats had once been, rubbing their outlines into the rock. “I think this is it.”  
  
She knelt and brushed away the grime in front of her, revealing a trap door with a heavy iron ring.  
  
“Wow, they really kept it close,” Poe said, closing the distance to look over Jess’ shoulder. He felt the first shiver of fear, as if the Cave itself had been roused from slumber and had started testing the air like a snake. “Zawati? What do you think we can expect?”  
  
“It is a Force test.” She said, sliding down the wall to sit in a pool of skirts. She looked like a siren who had come half out of the water, though instead of looking for prey she would be the character in such a fairy tale that was so desperate she had no choice but to ask outsiders for help. “You will confront something that lies deep within yourself. I can’t predict what that will be, but suffice to say it is usually something you haven’t fully processed yet.”  
  
“Damn,” Jess breathed.  
  
“Yeah, I’m not too excited myself,” Poe admitted, muttering through clenched teeth.  
  
“I already know what I will see,” Zawati said in an empty tone. With her shoulders bent in and her arms crossed over her chest, she looked so elderly as to be on death’s door and so lost and youthful at once that it unsettled Poe deeply. “We may as well face our destiny.”  
  
Poe saw Jess twitch. Trying to open the door, but too frightened of what was inside to do it. Poe crouched down and hauled at the iron ring until the door shifted in its moorings, another cloud of dust shrouding his face for a moment.  
  
_But this smells like life. Or like it could live again one day._  
  
When he could see a moment later it quickly became apparent that this was no cave, or at least, not a cave as he had imagined. This was a catacombs, and stars knew how many tunnels, chambers, and ways to get hopelessly lost there were.  
  
He didn’t realize how frozen in place he was until Zawati brushed past him, leading him and Jess into the catacombs albeit not speaking a single word. His legs switched on again and he rose to follow her down the rough hewn steps into blackness.

* * *

People had died taking this test.  
  
Poe felt their wispy spirits brush past, a cold spot at his temple, a red pinprick in his left eye. He felt his boot crunch into a new texture only to look down to see skulls leering up at him, half obscured by the stone.  
  
He inched away, found the wall behind him with searching hands, and moved in deeper. He'd lost Jess and Zawati within the first few seconds, though that he had expected. The scent of mildew and the faintest whiff of decay crawled into his nostrils and burrowed into his brain, confirming what he already knew. How many, left here to rot? _That_ , he had not been prepared for.  
  
He tried to focus on the task at hand to manage his nerves. He didn’t know exactly what he might see, not like Zawati apparently already knew what she might be made to relive, but damned if he’d let the dark corners of his soul entomb him down here. So when the catacomb shifted around him he let it, though he kept light on his feet in case he needed to make some quick moves. Could anything hurt him here, if it was all images and flashbacks?  
  
He held steady, hoping he’d see his mother. Even if it would open up all that old grief, he often craved the sight of her face. She, like his father, had been distant during his childhood. But in a way that had made them take on an almost god-like quality to him, like those lovingly rendered bootleg Join the Rebellion posters he’d loved so that showed some hero pilot gazing, determined, into the horizon with a field of stars at their back.  
  
He could remember how closely he’d studied Jyn Erso’s stern profile as a child, trying to find some characteristic of hers he could emulate to make him worthy of all the titles and medals she and others like her had earned. How he’d spend hours trying to draw Bodhi Rook perfectly, trying to commit every little characteristic of the few images of Bodhi that existed as if that could make him as great and courageous a pilot as the man who had first spoken the words Rogue One.  
  
The visions that did come to him then made little sense. It was as if he’d been bashed in the head and this was what his brain had coughed up in the moments before death. Stills from several of his most memorable battles freezing mid roll and becoming a vast jungle before blurring away into his room at the base at D’Qar, lonely nights wishing for love.  
  
He stumbled further into the catacomb, only the smooth stone against his palm to guide him. Soon even that simple sensory input vanished.  
  
_“Two? Are you sure?”_  
  
_He heard his own voice, but from an observer’s perspective. It was as if he had found himself with his ear pressed_ to _a closed door, trying to hear the conversation within. He saw his hand_ intwined _with another and knew in an instant that the other set of fingers belonged to Finn. It felt like him, so real that he almost lost himself in the moment and forget that in_ reality _he was in some terrifying cavern on a lost world._  
  
_“Wow,” Finn breathed. He’d never heard Finn that happy before, that reverent, and though they hadn’t had much time to have idle conversations in real life Finn had been invariably haunted, weighted down by a certain grim survivor’s instinct. “Poe, can you believe it?”_  
  
_Harter_ Kalonia’s _careworn face came into view. She smiled._  
  
Could it be?  Poe’s heart felt like it was banging pots and pans together in an awful racket, or like a whole kriffing parade shouting and hollering. Was this an image of the future, or was he so far gone over someone he barely knew that he’d already planned out their relationship, down to having twins?  
  
The happy image faded, leaving him a couple of seconds of pitch black nothingness before a new scenario asserted itself.  
  
_Another Knight of_ Ren, _bested. A human this time, her freckled face and black hair making her look so terribly girlish and normal. She lay on the ground at his feet, an ever-spreading blood pool under her_ black robed _body. She bared gore-flecked perfect white teeth at him._  
  
_“A curse on you and your stupid alien pet,” she spat, her milky-green eyes lit up like a lightning storm. “On your children. You might have killed me, but by the Dark Side, I will make you all suffer.”_  
  
_She stopped moving after that._  
  
He clutched at the ring around his neck. What was the Force telling him? Surely it was stupid to even think that he and Finn were in some way destined to be together.  
  
Wasn’t it?  
  
And who was this alien friend the Knight had referenced? Yet he barely had to think on it to realize that the vision was referring to Jin-Array. Their destinies had to be intwined too, somehow.  
  
So caught up was he in what he’d already seen that he didn’t comprehend the image of his mother when it did come, for several long moments. Even then she was just an outline at the far end of the tunnel, a static image like the aftermath of looking into a freighter’s flashing lights.  
  
“Mom?” He called, walking towards her. But for every step her form stayed maddeningly out of his reach. He understood, then. This tunnel was death, and he couldn’t cross it and stay on the plane of the living. “Mom. I miss you.”  
  
She stood turned away from him, by the cast of her hair. She didn’t move, but her outline got brighter, more solid.  
  
“There’s so much,” he said in a rush, trying to get everything out at once and babbling instead. “So much I want to tell you. I wish you could see me fly, mom. You always made me want to be a pilot. I - “  
  
She turned to him and for a heart stopping second she was real. Her body fleshed out, a style of Republic jumpsuit they’d retired twenty years ago on her slim, muscular frame. She had her sleeves rolled up the same way he did his, and he wondered if she ever hid those skunky Marcan herb cigarettes in the cuffs the same way he liked to. That curly, dark hair he’d inherited from her half obscured one of her huge, almond-shaped eyes. She smiled as if she could see him.  
  
Then she was gone.  
  
His own devastated cry reverberated back to him for what felt line an eternity.


	13. Terraform

Poe groped for a handhold in the pitch black, something, anything to guide him and give this endless darkness shape and contour. A beat, and then it felt just like his mother teaching him to fly, her strong, cool hand over his as he explored the controls, imparting a subtly and skill to his first efforts that surely wouldn’t have been there without her patience teachings. He found the rough hewn wall, and not for the first time he wondered who or what had shaped this place.

He descended down the spiral described into the earth, not so much as a ruler might descend to show off his finery, but as a supplicant might start crawling towards their destination weary but damned determined. 

The next vision didn’t exactly catch him by surprise, the ripple in the air, the way his feet felt disconnected from the path. His head felt as though it were literally in the clouds, tenuously sewn to his body by an unraveling thread. Tenebrous tendrils reached for him, and then _into_ him. He found himself standing in a place he recognized as outside his parent’s house, but it was of such a dimension and character that it telescoped in and out, at once completely recognizable and so huge that it seemed to go on forever.  

Poe looked around. Why here? He didn’t have to wait long; through the fresh grass came a child, one he knew well. Ben Solo, at about eight years of age, holding an X-Wing model in one hand, a plush bantha in the crook of his other arm. Even as a youth he had arresting eyes, and striking true-black hair that curled endearingly around his serious face. 

_I should hate you,_ Poe thought, the words rueful. He felt he should, for all the atrocities, everything Ben had done and been complicit in. Not the least of which violating his mind and having First Order goons beat him. And yet, what did he see? The child, the child who could have chosen any path. He wanted to reach into the vision and change the flow of reality somehow, turn some vital switch that would make Ben turn around and go back. 

The scene rippled again, and this time he saw Kylo Ren as an adult. No, not Kylo; as the figure drew back its hood, he saw that half of his face wore a shadow like a veil, the silver of that damnable mask glittering the way the carapace of a deadly insect glitters as its wings flare. The other half…Ben. He could still see Ben there. He looked…looked… _desperate._

Poe closed his eyes tight, a little moan of misery coming from the lips he’d pressed into a grim line when he’d first entered the vision. 

When he opened his eyes, he found himself standing in a desert, the red sand under his boots and in the air clinging to him in a fine carmine layer. Something he could only call elemental evil radiated from the very core of this world, dread rushing into him as plentiful as roaring spring rivers with none of the joy and life a real river would have represented. This time he didn’t see Kylo Ren or Ben Solo, but a woman in a white dress, the vision shimmering with heat as he stepped towards her. 

_Leia?_

But no, he could see by the cant of her head and the way she held herself that it was not the woman he’d come to think of as, if not a mother, a wise and implacable guide. For that matter, _was_ it his mother? That was closer, but not the whole truth. This woman had the indistinct quality of a Force ghost, and as he got near enough to touch her she turned to him. 

He thought the sheer terror of this place could very well undo him, but he focused on her as a beacon of normalcy. The closer he got the more apparent her predicament became. Black threads had grown into and around her glow, rendering her mute and motionless. Her throat worked as if she wanted to speak to him and couldn’t. He ran the last few steps. 

“Hey,” he said, “hey, how do I fix this?” He put up his hands as if he could feel around for a switch or something that would free her, as if he were trying to dump psi from a pressure release valve that fought him at every turn, the wheel slipping and abrading his palms. 

She shook her head, as if already knowing he didn’t have the power to release her, that maybe no one did. Her delicate, long fingers were spread apart, tense, trying to reach for him even so; whoever this was, she wouldn’t, maybe couldn’t give up. But of course it was just a vision; Poe knew in the way he knew his X-Wing that he couldn’t effect anything here. The images might be real, but the set pieces were not. 

Even though she couldn’t even tell him who she was, he felt an intense need to help her. Something about her felt…pivotal, beyond his empathy for anyone in such a state, the way her dark hair curled around her pale face. But the scene changed as if some demented master of ceremonies had totally re-ordered his world with nothing but a snap of the fingers. 

That night on Jakku. The Empire ships descending not so much as a swarm of wasps or a hurricane, but like terror given shape, something primal that blotted out all hope. Kylo Ren behind that infernal mask, the saber flashing as it cut through Lor San Tekka. Kylo hadn’t even hesitated. The boy Poe remembered didn’t even like it when he accidentally stepped on a bug or a snake, an event that could set off a crying jag until Leia picked him up and hugged the regret and sadness out of him.

When reality came back, the message couldn’t be missed: Rey was right. There was a conflict, a battle for Kylo’s soul, maybe. 

_What happened to you, Ben? Why did you take Snoke’s offer?_

* * *

 

Jess didn’t have to guess what she would see either, and she felt the same weary certainty Zawati had shown. The smell of jet fuel came first, a smell that could set her off at frustratingly random times. She could gas up her bird fifty times without a blip, but that fifty-first time could send her screaming to Dr. Kalonia for a new bottle of anxiety medicine. 

Though now that she had returned to the site of her greatest fear, she felt curiously numb. And yet, it wasn’t the kind of thing that brought relief. Her heart still thudded, slow and gasping. Her guts swam with misery and her head started to pound loud enough to drown out the sounds of people rushing to aid her Flight, for all the good their efforts would do. 

The X-Wings came into sight first, Raven 4’s bird in pieces, scattered all over the runway and into the hangar. He’d blown off one of the hangar doors on his way in, a shaft of sunlight piercing the shadows inside in a cruel, incongruous juxtaposition of signs and portents. 

All she could see of him was his sandy blond hair, detached from his scalp and tossed to the runway like a masquerade disguise. 

The stench of burnt flesh interwove with the reek of fuel and the miasma that had come from the broken apart ships, a smell that reminded everyone who experienced it that ships weren’t ever meant to shatter like this, that no one had ever intended for the chemicals and metalworks inside to be exposed. 

Coralis would be next. Jess resolved to stay put, to keep herself as removed from the cruel film unspooling before her. In nightmares she often ran heedless into the fire, just as she had in real life when Coralis’ soul-rending screams had started. Not this time. She would stay removed and cool no matter what. She _would._

But she heard the approaching ship, that terrible grinding whine that spoke of a failed engine, the whistling scream of a cracked open viewscreen. The X-wing came in like a skipped stone, catching the runway, belly ripping open with a torturous wail, skidding on its one wing into the hangar. The cockpit spun like a top. Jess could see Coralis’ reaching up, hoping, maybe, to get out through the shattered flexi. She needed —

— _help. Jess unzipped her flightsuit and snatched the shirt from her back, wrapping her hands and running heedless into the inferno. Her hair crisped and the straps on her suit started to fray and then melt. Coralis screamed, hammering against the viewscreen; Jess realized the heat had made the closures turn to slag in their casements. No one would ever open it now._

_The basic, urgent thought to somehow grab Coralis and yank her free through the ragged hole in the cockpit propelled Jess, making her fight through the fire to get there. Her screams joined Coralis’ as she touched what was left of the ship. Instantly, the flames -now bordering on a full on blaze - ate through the material of her shirt and into her hands. Blisters cropped up and exploded in the same moment, but she forced herself to grip the door._

_She didn’t realize she was being dragged away until her grip left the metal. Then the pain truly set in and she howled in agony, fighting the grip — didn’t they realize that Coralis would die? She heard support crews yelling at one another, trying to coordinate a rescue; she looked again at the broken X-Wing. It was a coffin made entirely of flames._

_Those left barely made it outside before it blew._

* * *

 

_Later, Jess sat boneless on the airfield. The other reports had trickled in with all the inevitability of drowning at sea once energy reserves wore out; not a single pilot from Raven Flight had made it, though they were still calling Raven 5 and Raven 6 MIA. Everyone dead or missing. Except her._

_“Pava.” Normally she would have been on alert and no one could have snuck up on her. And even if they had, somehow, she would have jumped to her feet at the sound of her name. Not now. Her name was meaningless. She hardly felt human, as if her limbs had floated away from her torso, attached only by thread spun from storm clouds. She grunted in response. The light of late afternoon caressed her bare shoulders - she hadn’t cared to find another shirt - but it felt insulting; how dare anything be pleasant after what had happened? She looked dumbly at the bacta bandages on her ruined hands._

_“Pava,” the other being tried again. She looked up. Ki Val ’s placid, coin-gold face looked back, his nostril flaps drawing in tight before flaring out again. Wasn’t often one saw a Blood Carver these days, and this Blood Carver had mysteries even beyond that relative rarity surrounding him. Beneath that even exterior, an assassin didn’t so much lurk as waited, waited for the right target, the right opportunity, to carve away what was no longer needed._

_He stepped closer, chitinous legs sparkling. The red tunic he wore, belted at the waist and long, felt appropriate. Not just because the color was a blood color for some, but because he looked almost priestly, like a hired mourning hawk._

_“What is it, Ki Val?”  She could barely focus on the conversation. The fact that they hadn’t even known who had shot them down tormented her, the inner chambers of her mind reverberating with shouted, desperate questions that had no answer._

_“Get up. You must be their witness.”_

_She burst up out of her sitting position, and whirled on him._

_“You don’t think I’ve witnessed enough?” She snarled, jabbing her finger into his chest. The screams, oh stars, the screams. Coralis…_

_“No,” Ki Val answered with maddening placidity. “Raven 5 and Raven 6 are still out there.”_

_She stopped of a sudden, as surely as if she’d fetched up against the kind of atmo that slapped X-Wings out of the air no questions asked._

_“You know they’re dead, don’t you?”  She asked. Ki Val inclined his head, his nose flaps now a dark grey. Jess didn’t need any more confirmation than that. “Then why…?”_

_“This is war. If you don’t seek them out and commit them to memory, who will?”_

_Damn him but he was right. How easy it could be to turn people into soulless lists in a ledger, their complexity stripped away, their stories lost._

_She found herself in the trees around base as if she’d teleported there, unable to remember much between her conversation with Ki Val and coming out to search for the last of her Flight. It didn’t take long; a plume of smoke blotted out the sky such that Jess could have seen it for miles let alone when she was practically on top of it. In the chaos, no one had paid it much mind yet._

_Raven 5’s X-Wing lay tangled in the canopy, twisted up, its gas tank pouring fuel onto the forest floor. She saw the body next, the little, inquisitive Chikarri features now blank and filmy. It looked like Aurian had tried to climb out of hir ship and no wonder, Jess had seen hir run and leap from tree to tree or rock to rock like a free running master on more than one occasion, that clever rat’s tail unfurled behind hir like a victory banner. Now ze hung from just such a tree, hir body as twisted as hir bird._

_Jess stood there and later she couldn’t say for how long. It felt like she’d wandered into a fairy ring — now where had that thought come from? Regardless, the urge to commit the scene to memory remained. This time she looked - really looked - at the tragedy before her. A strange calm stole over her, and she turned as if someone were softly entreating her to move deeper into the woods._

_Raven 6. This X-Wing had hit the forest floor, surrounded by the shattered branches that had been all but vaporized by a ship in mortal danger. As she stared, the figure in the pilot’s seat moved._

_She ran with all the desperate energy she’d shown Coralis. A solid wall of pheromones slapped her across the face. She felt nigh overwhelmed, fear ringing its klaxons in her ears, fury whipping at her back. Dor Namethians could produce some hellish pheromones when the situation called for it._

_“Rishi!” She shouted, waving away a coal-black tendril of smoke. The ship wasn’t on fire, thank the stars, but who knew how long until it caught?_

_She clambered up onto what remained of the X-Wing’s nose, wiping away grime to look into the cockpit. Rishi’s long neck twitched; she was alive. Jess hammered at the catches until they released, ignoring the pain of her burns. The dome of the ship peeled back, albeit reluctantly, accompanied by a cacophony of creaks and groans._

_“Jess,” Rishi coughed, reaching one of her long spindly arms out as if to touch and make sure Jess was real. Jess took her hand and assessed the situation. The safety harness had locked, trapping Rishi in her ship._

_No problem, Jess thought through a haze of grief and agony. I have a seatbelt cutter in my pocket, for stars sake. I’ll just —_

_She stared, dumb, into the cockpit again._

_Why can’t I see her legs?_

_“I’m going to die”, Rishi said, and before Jess could start screaming another wave of calm descended, this time a result of Rishi actively trying to quiet her with more pheromones. She wanted to struggle against that well-meaning numbness, but she was as susceptible as any other human and had little hope of winning._

_“No Rishi, you won’t. Don’t say that! I’ll get you out of here.”_

_She fumbled for the belt cutter in her pocket. Rishi’s spindly fingers closed weakly around her wrist._

_“Jess.” Her name again. Usually Rishi never addressed her in such a casual manner, and in this context it chilled her through and through. “Look.”_

_She did. The cockpit had crumpled around Rishi, biting into her midsection. Her legs weren’t visible because they were under a mountain of crushed metal and slag. How? How could Rishi be so quiet? The pain alone…_

_“No,” she heard herself moan in abject despair. “We have bacta. We -“_

_“But not enough,” RIshi pointed out. It was true. Jess had never seen a real deal bacta tank with her own eyes, and nothing less would heal Rishi’s devastating injuries. “Please. Just stay with me.”_

_“I can’t,” Jess said, tears rolling down her face and wetting her soot-streaked neck. “I can’t be the only one left. Why me?”_

_Rishi managed a trembly smile._

_“You have a destiny,” she said, “do you remember the prayers I taught you, back when we were stranded on Dantooine?”_

_Jess could only nod, mute. That mission seemed like a vacation now._

_“Say them for me,” Rishi said, sighing as she settled back against the seat that would shortly be her tomb. Jess did, stumbling, awkward, but Rishi smiled anyway. Murmured words of thanks, and then she was gone. It wasn’t like when a human died, that horrible last breath, the convulsions. She just…ceased to be._

_Later, Jess would hear the mechanics and medics who freed Rishi from her dead ship had to pick up her organs and wrestle them into specimen buckets; she’d been nearly split in half, and without the crumpled cockpit to trap everything more or less inside she’d come apart like wet tissue paper._

_“You know,” the clerk said to her that night as he passed a datapad to her, “you need a will, too. You’re the only one who hasn’t written one.”_

_That was exactly what was on the datapad, the wills and last wishes of her entire Flight. As the leader, she was their executor. She started to shake so badly that she spilled it to the floor, along with some of the brick-a-brack on the desk._

_“Sorry sorry,” she said, snatching up the datapad. As much as she hated staring into its impersonal screen, people rendered down to a couple of sentences, it was better than the nothingness that had dogged her steps since the mission had gone horribly, irretrievably wrong._

_The clerk fixed his pale blue eyes on her in an exaggerated expression of sympathy. Whether it was genuine, Jess couldn’t tell and nor did she care. What good was sympathy, from someone in a kriffing office who had never known hardship?_

_“Don’t be,” he said, tone genuine enough that it made Jess feel like shit for having assumed the worst about this man she’d never met before in her life. “Here, I’ll draw one up for you.”_

_He passed a piece of flimsi across to her after a few moments of scribbling; he could prepare an official document with such speed that Jess could certainly see why he’d found himself in his role here._

_By the line she was meant to put her signature on, a word she didn’t know caught her eye._

_“What’s this?” She asked, peering at it as if it would reveal its meaning if she only stared long enough._

_“Testor? It means witness. And also refers to someone who prepares a will, or who having died, has a will left behind.”_

_“Testor, huh?” She muttered, suddenly furious that the universe would choose to make its point in this way, in some featureless Republic office, her burned hands still struggling to grip a pen. She hesitated, afraid to write her name on that line as if it would seal some kind of arcane deal with the devil._

_The stylus moved. Jessika Pava, Testor._

 

* * *

Poe found the secret place, a cavern nestled against the core of the planet. He stumbled, going from total blackness to an electric blue phosphorescence so suddenly that he thought he might collapse. He kept his feet, barely. The place stood barren, and yet potential vibrated through the earth. This had to be it, the place where he could hopefully help somehow. How to do that was another matter, and he turned slowly to examine the cave from all angles. 

Visions still beguiled him, but here they were thready, ephemeral things that winked in and out of existence according to some whim Poe couldn’t guess at. Excitement built in the back of his mind, the planet’s excitement at a cure for its ills so close. He didn’t have to guess where to start a moment later; in the center of the chamber he saw Rey, Finn, and Jin-Array, gathered together and kneeling in a semi-circle. 

Rey and Jin-Array were no surprise, dressed like Jedi albeit in colors the old Republic would have thought unusual. But Finn drew the eye the most, Finn’s face partially hidden in the hood of his grey robes. He looked up, facial features cast in sharp relief despite the wavering quality of visions. Poe walked towards them, towards Finn, as if this vision could behave in any way like the man it represented. 

His foot came down oddly. He dimly recognized that he stood in a faerie ring of luminescent mushrooms, their caps leaning haphazardly against one another. He thought of the faerie ring Zawati had found earlier, where one of the memories of Jin-Array had risen up at her touch. 

_Now what?_

**Use the Force,** the planet whispered. 

_I’m not a Jedi!_

**You are infused with the Force. You may not access it the way a Jedi would, but here you will succeed if your will is strong enough.**

_Well kriff, I’ll try,_ he offered, still reeling from the revelation that he had the Force within him in any measure.   
 ****

**Reach below, under this infertile dust.**

_Gods,_ Poe thought as he wandered dazedly in the ring, as if some magic prevented him from leaving until his task had finished. How in the hell were you supposed to reach into something like that? He trusted solid things, the stick in his X-wing, the burn of alcohol after a mission. This…Force mysticism baffled him and he fumbled for a sign.  
 ****

It bloomed within him as he reached, concentrating so hard on following the planet’s guidance that his brow was sheened in cold sweat. He could no longer see the real world. Instead he felt the core of everything here, in turns fire and ice. He almost lost himself completely in that whirling, roiling energy. What was it, to touch the very soul of a planet?

With monumental effort he pulled his consciousness back, layer by layer. He had already known that the core must be salvageable or the sentience wouldn’t have been here to begin with. But it wasn’t the key to raising the planet from the dead. He refined his seeking, learning as he went. The Force felt nothing like what the Jedi had once wielded; how could something so mystical and primordial have produced all those serene monks? 

There. A layer of paper thin ‘skin,’ impregnated with seeds fighting to break through the planet’s crust. They could never manage it on their own. He sensed it, sensed it! Being a Jedi must have been a lot more complicated than he thought, with this kind of euphoria vibrating in his cells. Was it, at base level, the reason Sith existed? To embrace fire and use it for whatever they pleased?

He visualized bringing life to the seeds as much as he could. His will had strength to it, but having never trained in Force techniques it gamboled around like a butterfly on a spiraling breeze. It did come to him, though, albeit slowly: the terraform waiting for him to flip the switch and turn the key. He reached for a single seed.

_One at a time, Dameron. You can do this._

* * *

Finally, finally, the vision let her go. Jess found herself huddled against a wall, squinting against the darkness so total that it made hallucinations skate the edge of her vision if she let them. It would be all too easy to just lie down and wait for death, in a place like this. But then she saw something else, a little flicker of light. She braced herself and stood up. She shoved the desolation caused by her visions away as much as she could. Someone out there needed her. That was more important. 

When she laid eyes on the object that had charmed her, a curious thrill of both excitement and fear electrified her spine. A faerie ring, made of brambles. Every instinct told her not to enter it, that once entered it might never spit her back out again. But she knew also that this was the only way out of here, the only way to choose life for another day. She stepped inside. 

 

* * *

 

A red planet, craggy and foreboding. As Jess glanced at the crimson sand and then up at the harsh cliff faces, it became apparent to her that this hadn’t been plucked from her mind. No, this belonged to someone else.

Before she could even ask the question of where she had found herself, the Dark Force pulsing through everything here answered it: Korriban.

Her heart in her throat she started wandering, hugging herself and bent forward as if against a great wind. The stink of wretched creatures in their dens assaulted her nostrils, and the evil here  beat against her spine. She understood that this was another vision, yet she couldn’t help but wish for her blaster at least. She knew how woefully unprepared she was for a place this menacing, but there was no way out but through. 

“Ren!” She heard the voice over a mountain ridge, high and wild with emotion. Zawati. 

Jess scrambled up, handholds biting into her flesh. The hum of at least one lightsaber added to her alarm, settling between her shoulder blades as if she’d been struck by lightning all unawares. 

The scene came into view, a sere plain ringed by mountains. Jess hung back a moment, trying to understand it. Zawati had her feet planted in a fighting stance, and she once again wore her warrior markings. Her eyes were polished like an oyster pearl, but full of rage and despair like a sea whipped by the unforgiving winds. She was wearing a hot orange ritualist’s dress, the kind with the long skirt, an asymmetrical coat in deep blue partly covering the rest of her. A expertly tanned animal skin was wrapped and pinned around her waist like a sash; Jess thought it might have been a leopard’s pelt. Zawati’s hair was loose, mostly, though Veeka feathers in shocking red had been plaited into it here and there. It was the kind of outfit a clan leader wore when going to war. 

A lightsaber popped and hissed in her hand. 

Jess turned her head slower than she wanted to, as if the vision had become not only strange in content but outside of known time as well. The man across from Zawati had an odd beauty, his lilac-purple hair and grey eyes giving life to a raw-boned face. Jess found herself wanting nothing more than for him to smile at her, and when the feeling passed she shuddered. 

“Zawati,” he said smoothing his robes. A Jedi? What…? “I hope you have come to join me, my beloved bondmate. I have missed you.”

Zawati’s mouth thinned into a line that spoke volumes about the acidic pain eating into her very being. Jess’ blood turned cold. 

“This is too far, Ren.” She said softly, and though Jess could see her trying to present an aloof front, her gaze gave her away. “The Architects won’t give you what you seek.” 

“Too far?” Ren — _wait. his name is Ren? --_ Ren asked, shaking his head. “I have seen you destroy entire villages, kill anyone who gets in your way without a blink, sacrifice Nightbrothers as if they were nothing. But you come here to _lecture me?_ Don’t add being a hypocrite to your dirty list of crimes.”

“You were at my side for all of them,” Zawati whispered. “Every atrocity, every waste of life. You were with me. Speak to that. If you dare.” 

“If I dare? What is this, Zawati?” He asked, gesturing expansively. Only then did Jess realize that the hems of his white clothes were stained red, the sand creeping up as if to claim him. “Why do you protest now?”

“The things we did were about what we believed!” Zawati shouted, voice going from whisper to lion’s roar in a second’s time. “They were wrong, perhaps. But they weren’t done in the service of entropy. You are talking about unraveling the very core of the universe.”

Jess could hear the sheer shock and betrayal in Zawati’s words, the moment where Zawati realized that the Ren who had been her bondmate and the Ren that stood before her now were no longer the same person. 

“Surely you don’t mean to kill me,” Ren hissed. “You could never raise your hand against me.”

“You are my responsibility,” Zawati grated between her clenched teeth. “I never should have let you get this far gone. I taught you, as much if not more as you taught me. This has to end.” 

A bull's rush as they met one another in the middle of the plain, Ren’s lightsaber erupting out of nowhere to meet Zawati’s blade. A shower of blue and gold sparks rained down and Jess barely stifled a scream, though she doubted they could have heard her anyway.

Ren forced Zawati back, Zawati’s grimace and sharp canine teeth making her look like a cornered animal in the blazing light from the locked sabers. She fought for every millimeter of space, her feet leaving deep furrows as she dug her heels in. Ren couldn’t overpower her physically, but he was much better with the weapon of choice. Even Jess, largely unfamiliar with lightsaber technique, could see that.

He brought Zawati to the cliff’s edge. Jess tensed. She had to do something, had to help. Before she could Zawati lashed out with her free hand, leaving gashes on Ren’s face with her sharp nails. He gasped and stumbled back several paces, Zawati further disabling him with a face full of sand. Her saber flipped through the air at her command, striking Ren in the chest. 

He barely had time to look surprised before he fell over dead. 

Jess rushed over, yelling Zawati’s name. The witch didn’t turn. Instead, she sunk to her knees and bowed her head, alternatively praying and weeping. Jess fit herself against Zawati’s side, hugging her tightly like when they’d first come to the planet. 

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay,” she tried, but the stress of her own vision coupled with the sound of Zawati crying made her burst into tears too. As she watched through a film of wet, she saw Ren’s body unravel and disappear. “It’s over. It’s not real.” 

“Jess,” Zawati gasped, as if just then awakening from some terrible nightmare. 

“Yeah,” Jess said, smiling tremulously as she patted the feathers in Zawati’s hair back into place, “it’s me.” 

 

* * *

Poe could feel each dormant seed, every grain of sand that yearned instead to be fecund soil. He imagined the Force tree, its silver-white leaves, the faint blue energy around it. How it had bent over his bedroom window as if to protect him. 

_That is what could grow here,_ he thought, and a surge of fierce excitement rattled him. All the things that had once been part of this vibrant world _felt_ his thoughts, their essential features, and reached, just as he had reached into the earth for them. Around his physical body -of which he was only marginally aware - grass shoots came up around his faerie ring. The ring was the focal point for all of this, life and energy spreading out from it, from him. 

The flowers came next. Pink roses, white lilies, and other blooms for which Poe had no names. His breath came fast and ragged, and he had the worried thought somewhere in the back of his mind that this might well kill him before he could finish it. His nose started to bleed as the sand gave way to loam, but he pushed forward. Something waited just beyond his grasp. He willed it, pleaded with it to take form. 

The first branches pushed free right in front of him, though his head was spinning and he could hardly focus. He poured everything he had into it unstintingly, knowing that the planet would need this anchor to stay alive and to flourish. A Force tree. Soon, it towered over him. He looked up in awe, and then promptly collapsed. 

* * *

“Are you all right?” Jess asked, still frantic and searching Zawati’s form for any injuries. Zawati hugged her tightly. The scent of deadnettle and black pepper clung to Zawati’s thick braid, and that more than anything made Jess calm down. Scents were real. They had power. 

Maybe because of that, it took her a long moment to realize how intimate it felt to be wrapped in Zawati’s arms like this. She looked up to study Zawati’s face, so beautiful even in such grief. The kiss that came next felt inevitable, all the horrors of the Dragon Cave forced back into their dens by the light of morning. When it ended Zawati smiled at her, but before Jess could say anything she sensed some kind of change. 

Zawati helped her up, and hand in hand they went searching. Korriban’s power to terrify and wound started to come apart like gossamer, and Jess hardly thought her heart could take it. A moment later she gasped, squeezing Zawati’s hand. She’d seen it: a faerie ring, this one of white flowers nodding, drowsy in the heat. 

She and Zawati practically ran for it, finally leaving Korriban behind the way a bird would when taking flight. She found herself in a cavern then and for a moment she thought they would have to endure yet another vision, considering she didn’t recognize the place. But no. Her head and limbs felt firmly attached, and time had come back to itself such that she could almost feel it ticking along like the innards of a trusty pocket watch. 

“By my ancestors,” Zawati whispered in awe. Jess followed her gaze, blinking to clear the last of the dream-like quality from her vision. A tree, but not just any tree. It practically burned with the Force, making her gums itch and the hairs on her arms and neck stand up. 

“He did it. He really did it,” Jess murmured, and only then did she think about _where_ Poe was. She looked around and when she spotted his still form, she ran to him. For a moment she saw him in a ruined X-Wing, trapped under the crumpled cockpit. But then his fingers twitched and she fumbled for his pulse. Alive. Exhausted maybe, forever changed, possibly. But alive. 

**Thank you, seekers** , the planet said, and this time, they all heard it. 


	14. Vein

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this chapter includes explicit f/f sex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I broke my ridiculous 7k chapter into two. I hope y'all like this since I have worked on it so much I can't look at it anymore :P

_You love it how I move you_

_You love it how I touch you_

_My one, when all is said and done_

_You'll believe God is a woman_

_And I, I feel it after midnight_

_A feelin' that you can't fight_

_My one, it lingers when we're done_

_You'll believe God is a woman_

  _—_ Ariana Grande

Between them Jess and Zawati managed to heft Poe up, and then drape his arms over their shoulders. They struggled out of the cave and upward, Poe mumbling incoherently as they found their way through the darkness. Jess felt as if the world of the dead stood at her back, and she felt giddy relief at being able to leave it behind. 

When they reached the surface, a Force ghost was waiting for them. 

Jess’ mind circled round and around as if she’d taken a blow to the head. She and Zawati arranged Poe on the floor of the Temple; the ghost would have to wait. 

Satisfied that Poe was safe, she and Zawati walked out to the front steps. For a moment the only thing that could have distracted Jess from a kriffing Force ghost caught her attention: lush greenery had sprung up as far as she could see, replacing the oppressive smell of ash with a clean, green tang that brought tears to her eyes. The steps of the Temple were outlined in succulents, as if the hands that had so lovingly planted them had only just departed. A huge, lush vine of fire-colored trumpet flowers hung from the roof, curled into a comma in front of her. She gaped like an idiot. 

_Stars, did Poe do this?_

She made herself turn to the ghost, though the emotions of the sentient planet hummed up right from the core of the world, through her boot soles, and right into her heart. 

An Askajian stood there as patient as you please, a beautiful fat woman, all six breasts full and barely contained by her costume, her luscious body made up of extravagant rolls and valleys; she must have been full to the brim with water when she died, a sign amongst her people that she’d lived a good life with plenty to drink. 

_Hope I’m that fat when I go. Means I lived a good life._

The woman wore intricate dancer’s regalia, tomuon wool spun into some of the most in demand fabric in the galaxy, fabric that she wore with an easy pride. Her hair was caught up in an intricate headdress made of bones, leather, and twine. Jess couldn’t see any colors on her —she was the same blue-white that all Force ghosts seemed to share, if you could believe the stories — but whoever this was hardly needed color to catch the eye.

“Who are you?” Jess said slowly, having trouble reconciling the sight before her. The woman fixed her with a kind, even motherly gaze, and Jess felt a pang in her heart that she normally wouldn’t have indulged. 

“I am Mother Odgerel, cubling,” she said, the faint echo from beyond the grave doing little to diminish the joyful cadence of her words. “So grim! Now is a time for laughter.”

“How can you say that?” Jess practically wailed like the words had been a physical blow, disgusted at her own emotions picked apart like a raven’s dinner. “After everything? We saw…” 

“When you are in mourning, that is the most appropriate time for laughter,” she said. Jess almost started crying again at such sweetness, wiping at her eyes with the backs of her hands. “Besides, you have made your way out of the darkness. You have triumphed. And thus, I appear to you.”

“Yeah,” Jess said, energized and hungry for knowledge in an instant, “we’re looking for a Grey Jedi. A Vor named Jin-Array. Do you know him?” 

Zawati stayed silent, maybe not trusting her voice. That was all right. Jess could speak for her, and gladly. With Poe out, it fell to her to make decisions about what to do next. 

“I do,” Mother Odgerel said, face creasing with affection. “My little cubling. He came here to learn the secrets of this place, and I became his teacher, for a time. This is not a place where one stops and makes a home, no. It is a step on a greater journey.”

“Can you tell us where he went?” Jess said, trying not to sound too eager. “We have a friend. He’s hurt real bad, and we don’t have anyone who can heal him. We’re real beaded up about it. Hear tell this Grey Jedi can help.”

Mother Odgerel seemed rather smug about something, as if she were keeping a secret. Still,  the Force ghost inclined her head, her look an indulgent one. 

“He can. Jin-Array is very talented in many aspects of the Force. I will tell you where he went after his studies here were finished.”

Jess fumbled for the piece of flimsi in her pocket, dutifully writing down the coordinates as the Askajian spoke. 

“Thanks,” she said, putting the flimsi away again and turning to take Zawati’s hand. “This will really help.”

Mother Odgerel shrugged, a little smile playing over her full lips. “It is a time of war. No one is guaranteed a reprieve, as much as I wish it was otherwise. Go. Convince him to go with you. You will need every last ally you can find.”

She turned as if to disappear once more into the ether.

“Wait!” Jess shouted, remembering Poe’s curiosity earlier. “We saw another person in those Force visions. Who was it?”

“It will bring me the greatest joy to surprise you!” She said in a gay voice, stepping forward gracefully as if she were about to dance. “An artifact! Like you,” she said, taking in Zawati with her cheerful gaze. “It’s time they rejoined the fight, as you have.” 

And with that, she was gone. 

“Come on Zizi,” Jess said, standing on tiptoes to give Zawati a gentle kiss. She nodded at Poe, still supine on the ground and snoring like he was sleeping off a hangover. “Let’s get that sack of rocks and get going.” 

* * *

Poe woke up on the way back, insisting on walking on his own. She and Zawati let him, but kept close so he didn’t bumble off the path and break his ankle or something. Herded onto the ship, he demanded to sit in the pilot’s chair. What damage could he really do? Jess had seen him fly in worse conditions. 

She found herself alone with Zawati in the hallway, the both of them trying to keep it casual and failing miserably. 

“So I..uh, I better get some rest,” Jess said, very aware of how close her bunk was and how lonely it had become over the last little while. 

“That would be the most logical course of action,” Zawati agreed, but her hunting-tiger gaze said something else entirely. 

“Yeah?”

“Yes, of course.” 

Jess got the point and leapt on the chance, taking big handfuls of Zawati’s dress, pushing her against the wall and kissing her in a way that had little to do with softness or timidity. Zawati wasn’t the sort to respond with half measures, and they barely made it to Jess’ quarters before they were practically ripping clothes off of each other; Jess heard a couple of Zawati’s buttons pop and roll across the cabin floor. Luckily the witch just laughed, her own hands as daring as Jess’.

They all but fell into bed together, Jess pawing at Zawati’s tits, dipping her head to lick the hard nipples through the fabric of Zawati’s slip, cupping the full, heavy flesh in greedy hands. Jess took a few hurried moments to tug the rest of her own clothes off, her body heating up when she realized Zawati was watching her do it, straight-on. Those pearlescent eyes —without pupil or iris — nonetheless were easy for Jess to read; Zawati wanted this as bad as she did. 

“Okay Zizi?”: She found herself whispering anyway, sudden tenderness pooling within her alongside her arousal. Zawati looked like something out of an art piece, half naked, her white hair fanned out on the pillow under her, the pink streak in those skeins standing out like a vein.  Zawati reached for her, drew her in until they were a delicious tangle of limbs. The kiss demanded from her everything she had, a wet, messy connection that revved Jess’ engine more than any delicate thing from a dancing girl could. 

She breathed a curse when the kiss ended, realizing then how long it had been since she’d fucked anyone. She felt like a dumbass boy going for Zawati’s cunt so quick, hand delving past that fit stomach and over the curve of Zawati’s hip, but the way she trembled told Jess not to fuck around. That cunt was tight enough to hurt her fingers, and wet enough to just about drench her hand to the wrist. Well, she’d read the signals right for sure, she thought, just before Zawati’s mouth on her neck drove anything resembling higher thought from her mind. 

It had been awhile, yeah, but she remembered how to fuck a woman, Zawati’s low moans showing that she agreed with that assessment. 

Still, it was Zawati who made her take her hand back with a firm grip on her forearm and a shake of the head, though before Jess could ask what was wrong Zawati had artfully rearranged their positions so their wet pussies met and slid against each other, the line of Jess’ body curled over Zawati so their eyes met and locked together, too. The ease with which it happened made Jess feel stupid all over again; of course Zawati knew how to do this kind of thing; no way a bunch of Dathomiri tribeswomen lived together and _didn’t_ fuck each other at every opportunity. 

Jess leaned over enough to paw a jar of lube out of the organizer bolted to the wall before she totally forgot about anything other than what was immediately happening, adding way more than she meant to so that she and Zawati immediately made a mess big enough that she’d have to be careful getting to the ‘fresher later unless she wanted to fucking slide there. 

Zawati arched underneath her, the first real, loud cry of utter pleasure coming unbidden to the witch’s lips. Jess heard her own voice from far away, too, a steady stream of cursing as she and Zawati ground against each other, her slick hands leaving tracks on Zawati’s bare flesh so that she and Zawati laughed between the sounds of enjoyment as their bodies slipped against one another. It was good as any fuck she’d ever had and as funny as an oiled up wrestling match, which was just about the perfect encounter in Jess’ mind.  She could feel her own orgasm coiling up inside her tighter and tighter but she almost didn’t give a shit; pleasing Zawati mattered more. 

 _Come on, Zizi,_ she thought, doing everything she could to push Zawati over the edge. Zawati knew what she wanted, too, slipping against Jess as she moved, chasing the last jolt of pleasure she needed to come. All Jess could do was watch her face, awed by the progression of her expressions as the tension ramped up hard. For a second Jess though she might come first anyway with Zawati acting like that, and she bit her lip hard to keep it back. For some reason it felt important to give Zawati something special, all the moreso after having seen Zawati’s vision back in the Dragon Cave. 

The orgasm was enough to bend Zawati’s back and curl her toes, an accompanying sharp intake of breath that became a moan music to Jess’ ears. As if they hadn’t already made a Force-damned mess, Zawati squirted enough to get through even the too starchy by half standard issue sheets. Jess couldn’t hold back after that either and she let herself come too, shaking and shivering through something that…it felt as good as it was supposed to, as good as she’d always felt. But…

 _Oh._ She thought dimly, feeling as stupid as she ever had. _Yeah. Feelings. Right._

* * *

Later, Jess lay curled up in Zawati’s arms, her back to Zawati’s front. Zawati had two of those willowy fingers of hers deep in Jess’ cunt, lazily, slowly fucking her in a way that made Jess whimper and squirm. The urgent, dirty fuck they’d had earlier had been one of the more memorable ones Jess had ever had, but this kind of attention made her see stars in a whole other way. 

“Zizi,” she said softly, breathless, “will you tell me? About your vision?” 

Maybe it was a weird time to ask, but it didn’t feel that way. Hell, it was already a vulnerable thing, the two of them like this. It would have been all too easy for that first fuck to have ended where it started, like a lot of Jess’ sexual encounters. One and done. Hit it and quit it. The pad of Zawati’s forefinger found her g-spot and she felt her whole body go tight; well damn, this she couldn’t just walk away from. She wanted more. 

“I will speak on it, if you desire,” Zawati said against her ear, that voice making the first orgasmic thrills pulse somewhere deep inside Jess’ hard-worked body. “What would you have me tell you?” 

She knew then that Zawati would tell her whatever she asked, a rare and generous moment where Zawati felt as close to her as she felt in return, able to trust her implicitly at least for a little while. 

“His name was Ren,” Jess said. That detail had nagged at her, though not nearly enough to keep her from tumbling Zawati into bed first. 

“It was,” Zawati said. drawing her wet fingers from Jess’ cunt with an audible squelch. Jess gasped, a sense of being empty making her writhe fruitlessly in Zawati’s embrace. Only for a moment, though, those clever fingertips finding her clit dead on first try. 

“Oh fuck,” Jess said, pressing back against Zawati. The orgasm took her roughly, her hips jerking, a groan ground out against her clenched teeth. She turned to face the other woman after, seeking her lover’s face in the twilight. She wound her arm around Zawati’s neck and nuzzled up under her chin, and for a moment things were quiet. 

“He is the origin of the Knights of Ren,” Zawati said, as if she hadn’t just dropped the biggest kriffing bombshell of all time. Though, it didn’t really surprise Jess when she thought about it. She’d known, as soon as she saw Ren in that old, old memory. “Though he wouldn’t know many of their teachings, I’m sure. Somehow, either Snoke or Kylo Ren found what he created and made it the Order we pit ourselves against now.” 

Jess stroked Zawati’s hair, trying to offer what comfort she could. She didn’t speak. It didn’t seem right. 

“Perhaps a kernel of that evil is what drove Ren to the…excesses that forced my hand. He’d discovered the Font of Rajivari, yes. But he was not the first, and it hadn’t driven anyone else mad then.”

“I don’t know it,” Jess murmured. She didn’t know much of anything about Jedi and the Force and all that bantha shit. Better to let the sensitives handle it. There were some things it was best to avoid. Don’t ask too many questions. Keep your head down. 

“An ancient repository of Dark wisdom,” Zawati supplied. “He spoke of going back even further, learning still more. I…encouraged it at the time. I hadn’t known the call of the Light for many floodings, by then. It all seemed so _right._ When you are fallen, you truly believe that all the galaxies are just there for the taking, as your playthings. We had little reason to be cautious.” 

Jess lifted her head again and she hadn’t even realized she had been about to speak when Zawati said:

“Don’t. I will tell you anything you wish, Jess. But if you ask me about the evils I committed, you might not see me the same way as you do at this moment. Choose wisely before you speak.”

Jess shut her mouth and put her head down again. 

* * *

Poe caught sight of Jess’ reflection in the viewscreen. She hadn’t bothered to put clothes on and she looked like she’d just spent the last hour rolling around in a vat of slime. Her hair was in a shocking state, half stuck up, the other half snarled beyond hope. She was chugging a gallon of orange juice from the mini-fridge. Poe shook his head, but he had to smile, too. He wouldn’t have expected any less from his best friend.

He looked down at the star chart in front of him while he listened to Jess’ bare feet pad away. 

_An hour out, at most._

* * *

This planet felt alive in a way the sentient world they’d left behind hadn’t known for decades. A fine mist arose from the thick loam, bringing with it the perfume Poe associated with tilled over fields languishing in the humid season. Thick, gnarled trees dotted the land’s gentle hills and whorls, so unobtrusive as to be missed on the first pass. As he, Jess, and Zawati found something approximating a path, Poe saw creatures he had no name for peer down at them from the canopy. Their round furry faces almost looked human, their segmented eyes seeming to hold a kind of benevolent interest.

_Good thing we left Mathilde on the ship._

“Is…is that the Force?” Jess whispered, and her question made Poe realize that they had been walking through a cloud of it, grey magic that slipped under the collar of his jacket and played a haunting tune with his vertebrae as the instrument. He could feel also Zawati’s thoughts, gathering like storm clouds.

“It is,” she murmured. She still wore her warrior’s paint, and when Poe glanced back at her she looked like the personification of a night spent on Stargazer Hill back home on Yavin 4, where sometimes the stars would arrange themselves into shapes and even visions. “And more of it than I have sensed in some years. Certainly not the Grey, besides.” 

Jess shivered, crossing her arms over her chest. Zawati took the heavy fur cloak from her own shoulders and placed it around Jess’, slipping her clever fingers across Jess’ collar bones to fasten the tie. Jess shivered again, but Poe thought it had very little to do with the cold this time. 

“Our quarry is near,” Zawati continued, taking Jess’ hand. They looked like two seekers in a folk tale. As a child, he’d gone to the gatherings where elders told tales and warriors sang victory songs, the players in those stories dressed in feathers and beads and quills that rattled and fluttered as the people jumped and shouted. At any moment he expected Jess and Zawati to start telling one such tale, dreamily dancing around each other and beckoning one another to come closer. “And he knows it, of course.” 

Poe swallowed, mouth dry. He hadn’t felt fully solid and real since he’d left the sentient planet behind, and this place wasn’t doing his sense of previously unshakeable, boots-on-the-ground sensibility any favors. 

He and his companions came through the tree line. The first signs of some being having worked on the land came into view. A cultivated bluff swept down to what Poe thought could be a sea or a large lake; the smell of water came to him as he took in the details of what was around them. Maybe the vapor could be explained that way, too. 

Someone had spent a lot of time clearing and turning the soil here. Huge, swollen stalks bearing heavy yellow pods stood together like soldiers at attention to the right, casting their shadows over rows of squat, knotty melons,  black skins softly glowing in the mist. Seeking, ghost-white vines had sprouted and then curled and twirled across the ground like fancy script, the kind eccentrics still did sometimes on parchment. 

Poe walked forward, his eyes locked on the little paths described between rows. It reminded him of Zawati’s house back on Dandoran, but the true memory arose a second later: the garden around his childhood home. He could practically feel the love and care that had been put into all this emanating from the very soil, and for a moment he stood frozen as his eyes pricked with tears.  

A stand of vermillion sunflowers obscured whatever lay up the path, but before Poe could decide to go around it, someone just…appeared. The faint sound of barking and snarling came too, but Poe hardly noticed: it was a figure robed and hooded like a Jedi. 

“And just what,” the figure said, taking the hood back, “are you doing in my garden?”


	15. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe, Jess, and Zawati meet another shadow of the past. It's not who they expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a bit of a rewind as the PoV shifts at one point. This is intentional!

“And just what are you doing in my garden?”

Jess jerked her head up, guilty at the question: Zawati had threaded several purloined flowers into her hair already, a muted rainbow that glowed softly in the perpetual gloom. Even Zawati looked like a child about to be scolded; she rose stiffly, clasping her hands together in a posture that almost looked contrite. Zawati and this new being met eyes, and Jess felt their two Force signatures touch and swirl together like a whirlpool. She felt caught in the middle, heart ready to burst in a chest that wouldn’t move to take in air. 

“Jin-Array?” Poe asked, and Jess saw then that it _had_ to be him; his leathery lizard’s face made it so he couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else, though the ubiquitous mist had obscured it at first. His huge black eyes were set on either side of his head, tilted like a cat’s and teardrop shaped in a way that made him look unexpectedly expressive. His head had a slight triangle taper, and a long, heavy muzzle that nonetheless made him look faintly like a snake unsure of whether it would strike or not. As Jess watched, he bared his teeth a little and his thick tongue flicked out as if to test the air. She shivered; those teeth sat curved back and _sharp_ , a mouth full of scalpel blades.

_Hell, AND he’s a Jedi?_

Jess swallowed hard as she realized he probably had a lightsaber somewhere under that deep umber robe. You know, just in case the claws and teeth wouldn’t get the job done for some kriffing reason. 

“If you know my name then this isn’t going to be good news, is it?”

As Jin-Array gestured —Jess got the feeling he had the habit of doing so, almost like he was punctuating his words with his hands-- his disabled wing dragged, nerveless and awkward compared to its fellow that moved smoothly with the arm it was attached to. But what really caught Jess’ attention was his melodic, complex tone of voice, beautiful to listen to and engaging her sense of hearing on several subtle and deeply affecting levels. Zawati gasped at the sound and Jess groped for her hand. 

“N-No,” Poe said, the only time Jess had ever heard him stutter, other than right after Muran died. She glanced over. He looked stricken, pale and shaking like he’d found himself in Kylo Ren’s interrogation chair all over again. Hell maybe he had, in his mind. 

“You’re not First Order,” Jin-Array said, a milky-white lens flickering over his eyes for a moment as he studied their motley band. Jess adjusted automatically in her head, watching that. If things went to shit and they did have to fight him for whatever reason, she bet he could track them by infrared, or some sense inherent to the Vor people that would be a fucking problem regardless of what spectrum it used.

Poe shuddered. Jess waited for whatever smart ass remark he might have normally made. Nothing. 

“We are not,” Zawati said, apparently realizing that Poe hadn’t worked out speech yet and seamlessly taking the place he would have otherwise occupied in the conversation. “And have no love for them besides.” 

“We were sent by the Resistance,” Jess blurted. She could have knocked one upside her own head for that blunder. “I’m Jess and this is Poe. We’re pilots. This is our friend Zawati. She helped us find you.”

_Hard to believe I have a whole other identity that I maintain. Good move, Pava._

With childish errors like that, she might have just sealed their fates. But damn, she’d never heard _anything_ like that voice or felt anything like the Grey Force. 

Jin-Array’s eyes widened in surprise, a so very human expression on a very inhuman face.

“Well, come on then,” Jin-Array said, sounding resigned as if they’d shown up to enforce some terrible, long-avoided sentence. Jess followed, mute, in his wake. Poe and Zawati fell in beside her.

“Don’t you want to know how we found you?” Poe said, clearly baffled by Jin-Array’s lack of questions. “Seems like you went to a lot of trouble to hide yourself.”

“I already know. The only way you could: Mother Odgerel found you worthy.”

* * *

Jin’Array. It had to be. The only Vor on a lonely planet, clad in dark roughspun robes just like Poe imagined a former Jedi would wear. The big lizard approached, his hood down in what Poe hoped was a gesture of friendship. He could see Jin-Array’s coloring then, running a gradient from his pale face to his green neck to his black hands. A little blush-pink could be seen around his nostrils and at the base of the mottled spines on the back of his neck, spines half mast in what Poe thought might be an indicator of interest, like a cockatoo’s crest. 

The voice, though. The voice hit him like a sucker punch and he wobbled on his feet, halfway to putting his hand up so he could feel the bruise he felt sure would be on his cheek. The last time he’d seen his grandfather became Muran’s death became the interrogation room became that TIE’s cockpit with Finn in the gunner’s position before he could put a stop to it, pushing back with all the will he’d managed to build up during his years as a pilot. 

_Stars, what’s it like when a Vor sings?_

“Come with me and we’ll discuss what is so important that you would seek out a dusty artifact such as myself.” 

Jin-Array turned and only then did Poe really see that crippled wing. It dragged on the ground as they walked through the plush grass, and he felt a funny kind of dread. 

_Lightsaber burns._

What he’d seen in the vision was true; Jin-Array couldn’t fly. Poe knew exactly how _he_ would have felt if Dr. Kalonia had marched in and told him he could never sit behind his X-wing’s controls again. 

Jess elbowed him in the ribs.

“Look! The stories are true. He fought Darth Vader.” 

* * *

“Hey, uh,” Jess started as they followed Jin-Array like ducklings. “So. We saw you, in Force visions. You know? And well, there was someone else in them…”

Jin-Array clucked his tongue against his teeth, a sound that fell somewhere between resignation and affection. 

“I assume Mother Odgerel wouldn’t tell you when you asked.”

“Got it in one,” Poe supplied. 

They paused as an akk-dog came bounding out of the thicket. At first Jess went for her blaster; an akk-dog could do real damage and do it fast. The damn things had even more teeth than Jin-Array did, armor plating, _and_ when seen somewhere other than the streets of Anoat, had usually been trained to defend someone or something with deadly force. 

“Ease off, Jennet,” Jin-Array said, and instantly the akk-dog went from potential threat to a silly puppy, rolling on its back and kicking its burly legs. “Sorry about the dog,” Jin-Array tossed over his shoulder. “Get up, Jennet, for Force’s sake. Have some dignity.” 

The akk-dog was impervious to the teasing and only hammed it up more. 

“Go on and tell our friend we have visitors,” Jin-Array said, nudging Jennet with his foot. “Quick now.” 

The akk-dog bounded off, kicking up fresh dirt as he went. 

“You’re not going to tell us either, huh?” Poe grumbled as they all started up walking again. 

“I live on a planet that isn’t even on a star chart and I spend most of my time gardening. Let me have this bit of excitement. Besides, you’re Resistance, right? Maybe you’ll appreciate it.” 

Jess liked Jin-Array, she decided. He had a sense of humor.  

* * *

It wasn’t long before Jess could see a complex of humble buildings in the distance, half-glimpsed humps that nonetheless looked as if they had been meticulously planned. It reminded her of her humble childhood home in the slums of Dandoran, so simple yet so lovingly maintained. Every two weeks her mother would be out there hanging the laundry, trying to catch the only arid hours. Those were the same days Jess would find herself pressed into helping, a bread basket tucked carefully under her arm as she bore raw dough to the communal ovens. If they’d had the means, maybe they would have had a nice garden like this one, too. 

She could see Poe relax as well. She’d been to his grandfather’s house on Yavin 4, a place she’d taken to right away. It too bore more similarities to this place than differences. 

Before she could note anything else she saw a person leaning against the wall of the biggest building, likely the main living space. He looked conventionally male from a distance, a human with his arms crossed over his chest. 

“Try to look impressed you three,” Jin-Array said as they approached, his voice a dry snake skin left on a sand dune, “it’s not every day you meet Bodhi Rook in the flesh.”

_“What?”_ Poe said. “ _The_ Bodhi Rook? From Scarif?”

“You mean the Imperial traitor?” Jin-Array said, his face allowing some amusement despite his efforts otherwise, his spines lifting a little as if he were trying to suppress a grin.

“No, the commander of Rogue One.” Poe said, as if completely baffled as to why anyone would call _Bodhi Rook_ a traitor. 

Jess would never have imagined hearing a Vor laugh, but this Vor had reasons for living apart; that laugh came far too easily to his lips. Emotionless he definitely was not.  She understood that Jin-Array’s words had been a test, one Poe had thankfully and easily passed.

“What have you brought home this time, Arra?” Bodhi —kriffing _Bodhi!_ — asked. _Gods,_ the man still had a Jedha accent. She noted the affectionate way Bodhi tendered Jin-Array’s name too, a sweet diminutive like calling Zawati Zizi; she certainly hadn’t expected… _that._

Jin-Array sighed and shook his head, lifting his shoulders a little in a shrug that looked awkward on his body. Another gesture that looked as though he’d learned it from a human, and, Jess was now very sure, _this_ human in particular. 

It had been thirty odd years since the battle of Scarif, but Bodhi had aged well. His hair was still black, pulled back in a loose tail. He had crow’s feet around his dark eyes; still Jess couldn’t imagine Bodhi smiling.  He wore that same roughspun cloth that made Jess feel another pang of nostalgia for her home, a lean, nervy greyhound of.a man that regarded them as if that roughspun were plated armor; keep away. “He’s a little big for a stray. I don’t think he’ll fit in the akk-dog pen.”

“Holy kriff! It _is_ you,” Poe exclaimed, looking for all the world like a wiggly puppy just like Jennet had moments ago. “I _idolize_ you, man. You’re the _pilot._ You know? How in the hell are you here? And alive?

No wonder the figure in Zawati’s summoned Force images had looked familiar; Jess knew that Poe had watched the vids of that Scarif infiltration over and over until his grandfather had begged him to put something, anything else on. K2SO’s record wasn’t complete, of course, but the crafty old droid had painstakingly recorded everything he had been privy to, collating and correlating in a way no human storyteller could. The day _that_ vid had come out….Jess could only imagine what it had done to the Rebellion recruitment numbers. 

“These three come seeking shadows of the past,” Jin-Array said. His fingers moved as he said so, flawless sign language, or as near flawless as a guy could get when only one hand worked as good as it might have. Despite Jin-Array’s general good humor, Jess could readily sense his discomfort with the entire situation; even his hands gestured in a hesitant way, a kind of suspicious, hesitant cast to his sign. “Why is not something I’ve yet established.” 

Bodhi crossed his arms and scowled, but the scowl had a brittle quality. Jin-Array edged closer, his good wing unfurling a little more as if he were about to enfold Bodhi in it. 

“And if we don’t want to help you?” Bodhi all but snapped. He had his hands tucked under his arms, but he twitched in a way that told Poe he would be signing too if he had allowed himself to do so in front of strangers. In that moment Poe understood what was happening. He and his friends hadn’t just come to visit a random planet and hopefully get some help. They’d invaded a sanctuary, and Bodhi wanted to at least defend the house, considering they’d already stepped all over his planet. 

“At least listen to our reasons first!” Jess protested. Bodhi heaved a deep sigh and let his arms fall to his sides. 

“All right. Arra, let’s at least feed them. They’ve come a very long way.” 

* * *

Jin-Array’s spines slicked back at Bodhi’s words. Poe had met enough non-human beings to at least guess that it was a conciliatory gesture. Jin-Array lead the way to the house, a modest collection of mounds crafted from the unique materials in the rainforest. To the left stood the akk-dog pen with two more akk-dogs inside, bouncing around and barking in excitement at the new arrivals while Jennet gamboled around outside as if to tease his friends about being locked in while _he_ got to live it up. 

A line of carefully cultivated flowers and bushes lined the house on the right side, and someone had gone to the trouble of creating a front walk out of irregular stones set in the wet earth. About a dozen loth-cats peeked out at them all over the place, two on the roof, one in the flower bed, a handful in the front door. They looked tame as anything, albeit worried like most loth-cats did. Poe saw that they all looked ragged. One had a missing eye, another a crooked leg. One had lost half its fur.

_Rescues?  Did I really just meet Bodhi Rook and then find out he’s spent the last thirty years patching up loth-cats no one else wanted?_

Inside, Poe could immediately see why Bodhi didn’t want them in here. The space had so many personal items in it, it felt like another intrusion to even wait just inside by the door. The dining table, rough hewn from a piece of one of the mighty trees outside, had a collection of mismatched cups on it. The teapot had chips in the handle, and a worn place where someone’s hand had, over the days and months and years, rubbed the potter’s glaze off. Poe could almost _see_ Bodhi pouring that tea, every morning for who the hell knew how long. The scent of flowers and herbs suffused the space, along with the rich scent of baked mud; they must have used the latter to hold everything together. 

Jess moved around gingerly, as if afraid to break anything. She’d sensed it too, that they were trespassing. 

The house had few walls and Poe could see where at least Bodhi slept, a slab carved in to the wall with rumpled quilts on it. Like everything here it was easy to imagine the two of them stitching those quilts, maybe on cold nights where neither of them felt like venturing outside. 

_Someone doesn’t believe in making the bed._

The little shelf at the head of that bed had a datacron on it, the kind that could only hold a few moments. A single message, maybe two. Curiosity made Poe itch to take it, open it. He couldn’t believe Bodhi was real and alive. Maybe seeing what Bodhi cared about would help, anchor Bodhi in the here and now. Then again, the datacron looked old, a model at least thirty years out of date. Gods, what kind of message would someone on the run care about that much? To preserve it over the decades? Bodhi and Jin-Array hadn’t met immediately after Scarif; they couldn’t have. There had to be a lot of years far, far removed from this idyllic hideout. Bodhi hardly owned anything, if the house was anything to go by. Why this? 

Jess grabbed his arm and shook her head, and he drew away without handling the datacron after all. 

Man oh man, he thought as he turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. He had so many stories for Finn when Finn woke up. He’d have to write them down. He didn’t want to forget a single one. Shit, maybe Finn wouldn’t even believe him, even with Jess and Zawati to back him up. He almost doubted all this himself. 

_Is this what its like to have the Force order your life? What are the odds that these two know each other at all, let alone live here together when you happen to come calling?_

“Well, sit,” Bodhi said, coming through the door after them and blinking at the change in lighting. “You might as well have some tea.” 

Poe caught sight of Bodhi framed by the rays of the double suns outside and his heart became _really_ noticeable then. It sure had an opinion: Bodhi Rook was one of those lucky men who just got more distinguished with time, though being fifty-odd was hardly even middle aged. 

Jin-Array put the kettle on, his big hands remarkably dexterous. Well, hand. The disabled one dragged behind, fumbling a little, though not as much as Poe might have expected. He supposed Jin-Array had plenty of practice making it work as he needed it to regardless. He wondered about the sign language too, then. Bodhi didn’t seem to rely solely on it, and it wasn’t down to lip reading since Poe didn’t even know if he could have, considering Jin-Array wasn’t even close to human. A habit they’d gotten into at some point? A code when they were in dangerous situations?

A loth-cat rubbed against his ankles, mewling. It was a raggedy black and white striped specimen, and when he reached down to pet it, it stood on its back paws and begged to be picked up. Poe obliged it, cradling it in his arms such that he thought the poor thing might blow a gasket trying to purr that hard that quick. He caught Zawati smiling, too, surrounded by loth-cats like something right out of a fairy story. 

“Look at these idiots,” Jin-Array said as he waited for the teapot to boil. It seemed he had already gotten over at least some of his annoyance at having visitors. In fact underneath the more reserved exterior he seemed at least as curious as his pets. Bodhi snorted, rifling through the mugs and choosing one for each of them.

“See what they want, and I’ll make something to eat,” Bodhi groused. 

“That’s a good question,” Jin-Array agreed as they all joined him at the table save Bodhi, who took down an earthenware bowl from the shelf over the hob. As Poe watched, he put flour, salt, and water in it and went to work making dough. His movements were efficient, practiced, as if he’d been making it his whole life.

_Bodhi Rook,_ Poe thought, his inner voice still faint with shock. _Bodhi kriffing Rook._

“We have a really good friend. His name is Finn, and he’s a big damn hero. Fought Kylo Ren and everything,” Jess started, taking a full cup of tea from Jin-Array as she spoke. “But Kylo hurt him real bad. Lightsaber to the back.”

A stormy expression came over Jin-Array’s face, and Poe found himself edging away from the big lizard; his wicked sharp claws were peeking out of their sheaths, incongruous against the teacup in his hand. 

“Anyway, it’s bad.” Jess kept going like she hadn’t noticed the change in Jin-Array’s mood. “They say he might never heal up right. We have him in a medical pod and everything, but with supplies so tight that’s about all we can do.” 

“You need a healer,” Jin-Array supplied. Bodhi went to the hob, turning pieces of flatbread dough over the low flame until they crisped up and the smell of mellow garlic filled the space in a puff of fragrant steam. Poe felt himself practically drooling as he realized how long it had been since he’d eaten last. 

“Yeah. A damn good one,” Poe said, trying not to hope too hard. “It’s his spine. Don’t know enough medicine to say exactly what’s going on, but you cut the strings and the legs don’t work anymore. And that’s aside from the fact that he…he…”

_Fuck. Keep it together in front of these people, for star’s sake. You can’t fall apart in front of Bodhi._

Bodhi had lost everyone. 

“He won’t wake up,” Jess added. 

A long moment of silence. Then Jin-Array said, “You came all this way? For Finn?” 

“Yeah.” Poe said. Jin-Array watched him a long time. Poe felt pinned to his chair, but unlike his experience with Kylo Ren, Jin-Array watched him in a way that made him feel like they were sitting in the vibration of a bell having just rung; where Kylo Ren had taken whatever he had wanted, Jin-Array just… _saw_ right into him. 

It took a long moment for Poe to realize that his jaw was practically on the floor; it wasn’t every day someone truly _saw_ him, _knew_ him. Jin-Array had accepted everything he’d seen without question and the feeling of being buoyed up out of a very dark wave overcame him. He closed his mouth and blinked, trying to retain some sense of dignity, but the Grey Force had reached into that blackened Force tree Kylo Ren had created; leaves came into being vein by vein, brilliant silver. 

Jin-Array glanced over at Bodhi as if he hadn’t just re-ordered Poe’s soul with all the easy aplomb and grace of a professional dancer utterly owning the stage. Gold lenses flickered over his depthless black eyes for a second, scintillating, brilliant color that practically glowed in the soft atmosphere of the house. Poe’s heart twitched and his stomach leapt ahead like a nervous rabbit.

Jin-Array turned back to them. His gaze fell to Jess and Zawati’s clasped hands. Zawati looked back at him, confident yet neutral. Poe got the idea that she’d stayed quiet this long as a matter of etiquette, one Force master to another. 

“I’ll do it,” Jin-Array said, eyes black fields again as if the change had never happened. Bodhi came over then. The fresh bread felt like eating a cloud, nourishing Poe’s body to go along with his chrome-buffed emotions. They’d definitely come to the right place. 


End file.
